001so i'd like to start the october 28th regular session at 7 32 if we could please rise for the pledge of allegiance and if we could have a um followed by a moment of silence for bob lynch as he worked for the talon school systems for about how long dr willett oh god more than a decade and also for the former uh board of ed member karen berchano's husband also passed away sergeant stephen roshano so i think we should just have a quick moment of silence for both of them are you ready with the pledge of allegiance i am um justice so thank you everyone and i didn't get to see the kids walt it was uh not on here did you hear them i heard them ah okay okay there they are oh there
002they are i don't know why i just did that but that's who you were supposed to be seeing when you heard them sorry that's great though i love having those okay we will move to the um approval of the agenda we are not switching anything or changing anything i think everything is where it needs to be we will skip to um approval of minutes add something to the agenda um what would you like to add i would like to move to add a discussion um at h4 i'm sorry h5 of making the zoom participation um available to our residents going forward like kind of a permanent basis because i think that it's brought a lot of uh folks um into our sphere um so that is emotion a second it karen i just wanted to
003quickly understand what the actual motion is it's about zoom participation let me say it again because of the increased accessibility for residents i moved to add h5 to the agenda a discussion of making zoom participation a permanent fixture even after we move out of the pandemic status okay anyone else have anything to say and i have to get my little blue hand up here uh plural is your hand up yeah it's up i just think this is probably a discussion for the policy committee before it comes here so i probably wouldn't vote it vote to add it to our jam-packed agenda for tonight it's just a discussion but and it's been seconded but that's fine um yeah oh um yeah i i guess i wasn't i'm i think i'm just not clear but maybe it
004would be cleared up during the discussion are we proposing that zoom be always on even if we were to go back to town council chambers you know what i mean i i'm not clear on what the discussion is but maybe that's why we're having a discussion so yes that's correct okay uh tony no never mind our way to the discussion okay so this motion is right now to add h5 for a discussion on the zoom participation so i will go through everyone um karen hi pete aye lauren abstain okay and tony hi okay um i will be an eye as well therefore we'll have h5 zoom discussion participation on there um just to keep everybody a reminder that this is going to be a jam-packed meeting so if we could try to get through all
005of the materials because i really don't want to be here until midnight tonight okay so we will have that now we can move to the approval of minutes i will entertain a motion to um approve the october 14th minutes motion to approve ashley i have a correction okay um on uh i was gonna say page 21 but all of mine are page 21s so right before k2 um it said that it's kind of the second to last page it says that ms plourde requested that dr willa have a discussion with the town about the lift it already has i just wanted to clarify that that was me who um said that so lisa if we could just adjust everything in that little paragraph that says mrs ms plourde was actually ms griffin and i'm sorry
006we might have been using first names at the time so uh we will try to keep using last names because i think that works better so i do try to say griffin implored so it could have been me okay anyone else at this time have any corrections okay um we will do the roll call uh karen hi kate sorry i lauren hi jacob hi griffin hi rini i tony stayed okay you know i as well oh and i see lisa has her hand up lisa who was the second um i believe it was kate implored cape motion yep and then plort second got it thank you no problem okay the motion passes with the october 14th minutes um we will go to public participation which is a two minute time limit tony will give you
00730 seconds a reminder he'll do a visual and let you know and if you could when you're talking if you could list your name in your address at first and then we can go from there and this time you can raise your blue hand carrying your hand went up [Music] i was like you're gonna get a chance karen sorry anyone else from the public uh peter mccann all right um i just unmuted myself and turned on my camera so hopefully you can see me yup you're good good um so obviously i emailed a bunch of you including uh dr willett about the back to school full-time plan starting on monday and i just wanted to um understand why the the current option of hybrid is no longer an option i think um it's been good
008for my kids i have a sixth and eighth grader um that go to the middle school and they feel comfortable they feel safe my son's class his homeroom class i believe according to him there's 17 kids in that right now so they're required to wear a face shield as well as a mask but it's the only class that he has to wear the face shield in the mask the rest of his classes he's just able to wear his mask my daughter doesn't have any classes where she has to wear the face shield but i'm guessing with the full in that that's going to be more of a requirement and obviously with safety being the number one concern i'm just confused why an option that many of us parents in the community feel happy with is
009no longer an option and obviously you know as soon as i like i remember doing a google form a survey explaining i gave the board praise the the superintendent praised that the hybrid was working because my kids get to see their teachers but they also can work from home and it's not a perfect scenario for sure but i don't think um i think it's asking us parents to put our kids in a difficult position because either we have to say no which they're going to hate us for um thank you and we're looking out for their safety or we have to send them in and god forbid you know that if they get sick then we have to live with that and the repercussions and i know not many kids are getting sick but there
010are kids that are getting sick um so i just wanted to hear the rationale from the board i thank you if you could also just uh state your address for alisa yes 30 holly road perfect thank you peter yep i'll shut off my uh my mic perfect is it normal that people shut off their cameras too i noticed i would seem to be one of very few they had a camera on yeah no you you can shut your camera off and you're in your mic if not doctor will it will shut your mic it just kind of goes away um at this time is there any other um public participants that would like to speak at this time and if you could just list your name and your address and if not we will move
011on to correspondence okay okay at this time it will close the public participation and we will move to the correspondence uh tony thank you madam chair uh we received an email advocating continuing the personal in person writer is concerned that this period coming up includes both the thanksgiving holiday and halloween holidays and that families will be gathering an email concerned with the loss of lunches with the middle school and high school schedule author asks for more considerations with the shortening of school days in an attempt to have full in-person classes email from a parent upset that the pip option was being removed email requesting that the board be quote sincere in their planned upcoming priority setting and an email concerned with the removal of the pip given the potential effect of the upcoming holidays thank
012you man thank you very much tony let's go to points of information i will open this up to board members to um have a say and dr willa if you want to respond to anything you can as well at this time sure um here i'm just making sure adding a few more people to the to the meeting here real quick um so uh mr mccann's question and it's a good one and understandably so um can you hear me can everybody here okay you know it's uh each of the education option periods that we have uh we sit down with a variety with a number of stakeholders and and we look at a lot of information um and so in making considerations you know we take into account uh considerations from the eastern highland health district
013the department of public health the facilities um staff um the teachers the paraprofessionals uh the transportation personnel um and in many others and in the meetings have uh you know the main purpose of trying to provide the best options we can within what we can logistically manage um and so there are you know the safety is is obviously of primary importance uh students social emotional academic health is a primary importance and um and you know us being able to execute the job and provide a quality educational experience obviously is is important so one of the reasons why we don't offer a multitude of options and we have to limit it is that logistically when working with the staff it would be very very difficult to have different modalities of that happening you know right now
014if we have the four day in person we can provide a quality foreign day in person program and there are some students attending remotely from an attendance and tracking and even safety perspective if we're overwhelmed by the logistics of the situation we're not able to focus as well on the safety and on the execution of the programs we have um so when you're looking for some kids that are there some days and not others and then it reverses and there's a day groups and then there's b day groups and then there's four day groups and then there's remote groups and it's too much for people to handle and handle it well um and so you know that that came out in a number of discussions and like i said i listen to the stakeholders very
015carefully this program that we have uh is you know is offered in and i think offered with the advice of and the input from all of these different groups and the the four-day option provides the the benefit of getting kids in front of their teachers many more days while still retaining the remote learning day on wednesday which provides extra cleaning time a break in sort of the exposure and um and at the sixth through twelfth grade getting them out on that modified schedule avoids one of the biggest potential issues which would be having kids of that size and age group and and developmental level um interacting in that calf so it provides kids the maximum amount of opportunity and time to be together face to face with teachers and other resources like counselors and so
016on and it um while trying to mitigate and minimize the risk as much as possible out of about 200 records so far submitted you know we've had only one covet situation um and that situation was not uh you know was not interacting with the populations of the school um and so it's you know it's a it's a situation where that kind of data plus um other data from the district in the county you know we're in a very very good place to be able to provide this uh four-day in-person education that really is beneficial for kids when i was talking to the counseling group today you know and i have recurring meetings with all of our psychologists and counselors one of the the things that was coming out almost almost universally from that meeting was
017how beneficial it's been um k5 and how beneficial it is for the kids to be in person um and be interacting in person so um you know it it is uh when when you sit down and you um are able and have the privilege of being able to be in these meetings it does become very clear you know what's most beneficial for the student populations right now even though it doesn't intuitively feel that way when when we're looking at the news and i and i completely respect every family's decision that they have to make that decision for themselves and what's right for them but um in these meetings it became pretty clear what we could execute responsibly and you know and what would be most beneficial for the student populations at this time given the
018prevalence of the virus in our in our county in our town and in our schools at this moment in time and it may change a month from now or two months from now but right now this was the the the option that was available to us because of the prevalence in our area so i mean i that's the best answer i can give but i'm happy to follow up further um on a one-on-one or in person with anybody or through a text or a call um if desired i think you gotta go dr willa let's go to kate um uh so just i would like to say in agreement with some correspondents from a resident um this is a question for the board leadership uh whether you're planning to hold any board meetings in the
019middle or high school classrooms i think i agree with this resident and i think this would greatly help to the members to understand what being all in would be like i think it would be great if we could hold our november 11th meeting in a classroom okay thank you uh tony yeah i just wanted to take a moment to you know to thank dr willett and the rest of the members of the board and the parents for for those that don't know for the past three months or so i have been in australia doing for work and have just returned as of late monday early tuesday back home so while i've attempted to be in as many meetings as i could and still do my duties as a board i know a few things have
020had to be picked up by others and like i said i just wanted to take this opportunity to voice my appreciation for the help that i know you gave thank you and welcome back tony it's nice to see your smile over here in terms of kate's question i know that that was something that we had talked to dr willett about and the problem is with foia if you don't have public space for enough for the public comes then it becomes an issue in terms of not having the public being allowed in therefore that's why when we had the meeting we had it in the ths um library because the space is available so if we were to go back to a hybrid or have anything we'd have to have a larger space in case the
021public comes because if we shut out any public then we are in uh violation yeah i'm just wondering if we could make that a zoom meeting for the public participation um you can't just sit there and say your public are allowed to come like that is a part of the whole foia process i understand that yeah okay let's go to the student representative report alexandra costa and summer simmer um greenwald hi everyone so student council had their mental health week um this week and we're continuing it actually to next week so we can get more to participation with students so basically what we did is we decorated the school with some nice fall decorations and then we have gift baskets where students can give one dollar and up to five dollars um to purchase these
022um gift baskets and some of them include blankets and other like self-care things and the money we get will be donated to the national alliance on mental health and we've also been doing things with our announcements we've been having breathing exercises and eventually we're gonna have relaxing music being played and also it this is kind of like a question but um some classes in the high school will be 30 people and there's not going to be much social distancing so it would be good if like there could be a plan sent out about how we're going to sanitize and make sure you know everyone's in like a safe area um so the freshman sophomores and juniors all have psats tomorrow so we're wishing all of them luck um seniors are going to be working from
023home eastern conversely um so we're obviously coming up on like the new pandemic period um just have lunch like obviously middle classes there um we're all like looking for ways to still like host clubs in person uh we're thinking i think what's gonna happen is we're gonna have like a study hall time right after school so that people who want to do like the grab and go lunch can stay at school and eat lunch and then we'll start clubs i think around like 12 50 and then um we've heard some concern at our the high school especially um just kind of people wondering if there's to be like more cleaning measures in place for like the new period or the new pandemic like opening period so if someone could just like touch on that that'd
024be great thank you and just a big reminder to all parents um the freshman sophomores and juniors just charge your calculators for tomorrow um i know my son will be taking that tomorrow and i think dr willett will be speaking to the cleaning process and things of that nature correct dr willa in your kovid update i can i can give two really quick answers i i lost a little bit of what um what alexander was saying i don't know if uh everybody else did but i lost some of it but i think what to answer the questions um the tallinn public school pandemic continuity of learning plan has it's like about 100 pages it has many sections and it does describe a lot of our operations and our and how we're addressing issues um and
025um i think the question from alexander was about cleaning and um basically the the plan that we have as we enter 612 will give us more time uh give us more opportunity to to do that kind of cleaning and give us a greater opportunity for uh keeping people socially distanced and some of them in some of the more vulnerable places like the cafeteria things like that the ppe in the department of public health has given us guidelines that you know with ppe and our tracking you know efforts and things like that uh we're able to you know to provide a safer educational environment while still in classrooms having kids being a little bit you know closer to each other or closer to each other than say the the cdc's the deep you know guidelines the
026dph on the ehd have both you know approved our plan and i ran it by the eastern highland health district as well with the details um and they you know that's one of the considerations i do when we're going into it i i asked the ehd is this going to be a situation that would be you know would be advisable or approved and um i did receive the you know the response that this would be uh for the time that we're in a reasonable approach and so um you know that all plays into the process i definitely would not do it without um without checking with those you know those official groups to make sure that we would be doing something that you know to make sure that we're doing something that's uh reasonably safe
027thank you ladies and thank you dr willett let's move on to uh summer attendance report h1 covet update okay so um covet update uh you know again when i uh we published the agenda on a friday so the information available at that time was as follows although there are um there's updates to this um you know i don't think uh though we have not received the most recent dhhd report is that will come out again probably at the end of the day on tuesday as i recall but i uh each week i'll update that in this case the most recent update prior to our meeting has for us 137 community submissions 31 um submissions we did have four that we recorded there were positive covet cases there were no in-school closed contacts and three of
028those cases were remote learners that hadn't had any contact at all in the schools but had had contacts outside of the schools and so what we're finding you know interestingly enough and what the dph is also talking about is that it tends to be the outside context not not necessarily what's happening within schools but more what's happening outside of schools and the um and those that is what is affecting most of the school systems where they are affected is that it has to do with something that occurred outside of the district or outside of the school system or building so it hasn't affected us um and we haven't had the impacts that we've seen say in some of the other areas this this particular district with the cooperation of the families um in the community
029has been uh was has been wonderful i mean honestly the uh families are working really really closely with the school system with respect to uh you know uh following up and and uh respecting our tracking and everything that uh you know we're doing in our phone calls so um the community has really been cooperating and working hard to keep everybody safe um the numbers for the the county as you recall um you know the uh the county has the ten out of a hundred thousand thresholds for a seven day rotation in order to move to say a a hybrid and um you know we're not we're not really near that at this time with respect to our county um other things can cause that though you know there can be individual town or there can
030be individual school impacts the town the state of connecticut just introduced its red alert program so you'll notice that you know it has highlighted communities that it felt uh you know as a town are headed in a uh in a direction that's concerning um thailand is not one of those towns and there are a series of towns around us that are similar um there are some other towns that are are now on the alert list for the state of connecticut but thailand isn't one of them and some of our neighbors are also in a similar similar place so we are still in a good place right now um both as a county as a town and as a district this data is updated i usually will put it up on the blog weekly but it
031gives you a sense of you know where things are and and where things are headed in our community and some of the other towns within the eastern highland health district so this information is uh is generalized to many different towns um what i've done too is uh taking a look at the data from our ad options to provide a little bit of an idea on what our you know what our sign ups were and what the you know the proportion of learners are that are remote at this point um as of midnight on october 26th um or the grade k through two we have an 8.2 remote learner population you can see the numbers here it's about um 10 kids in kindergarten 14 in first grade 15 in second grade um the tis school grades
032three four five you know 14 17 and 18 respectively it's about 49 or 11 percent of that school remote learners for grades six seven and eight that would be 23 22 and 28 for those grades that's about of that school population and the high school the remote learners are you know grade 9 10 11 12 14 29 25 and 24 for 92 total about 12 percent of that population um so you know there are some straggling numbers here you know uh tta for instance some of those programs that are very small um they may not be in the number but that's two or three kids in some of the smaller programs so this is the vast majority of the school's programs um and within those buildings the percentages so it gives you that sense that
033you know you're at about 88 to 92 capacity and most people are are coming back um for the four day uh so that's that's in a basic update for kovid you know i'd be happy to answer any of the board's questions um and provide any other any other information that i can okay thank you dr willa for putting this together at this time though um any board members have any questions let me just get my little blue thing back up uh griffin thank you ashley um thank you dr willett for um putting all this together um i am i'm glad that we're able to go in for the four days for six through 12. i think it's going to be important to get them as much space to facetime as we can i do have
034some concerns um about the asynchronous wednesdays i'm wondering if there's a way at least for 6-12 or really more specifically for 9-12 if we can have more synchronous learning with the teachers perhaps in the building on wednesdays and live streaming their classes um the way that i guess basically the way they had been for the half the class for the hybrid so i'm just wondering if um that would be possible especially if they're getting out at 10 45 specifically for the high school you know what additional resources would the cleaning crew need in order to be able to maybe get this done from 11 o'clock on so that the deep cleaning would be done because i just again i'll just reiterate i'm concerned especially with the high school because their classes are going to be
035over in mid-january the third week of january and they've lost a fair amount of kind of instruction time already with uh for the first quarter so i just like to see them get a little bit more um synchronous instruction thank you um do you want me to kind of respond to each of the questions in kind of wait yeah no you can respond that way if there's any other further questions she can ask them and then we can move on okay so i um so a couple of things i did uh i did you know i we have been looking at constantly evolving how we offer things and and what we offer um i did talk to the administrative unit in in one of our meetings um we are doing an you know overview of
036the google classrooms uh each of the administrators is going through and you know taking a look at um what's being provided on the on the wednesdays so we're gonna we're in a process of sort of evaluating where we are for our uh remote slash asynchronous wednesdays um and i expect to have the results of that maybe ten days or so as we get through it maybe a few more days than that as as we complete that um process of just kind of doing a sample we know intuitively and we know from some of the other experiences what's going on but we're doing a specific kind of sample of them over the next 10 or so days having said that you know they do have and in many places are kind of using some of the
037synchronous video and doing some of these meetings and maybe not all populations every time but when i asked about it um i wasn't getting a lot of feedback that there was a feeling that that wasn't happening so we're going to be doing a that 10-day piece just to kind of see in terms of additional resources for cleaning crews to have them start at 11. one of the things that came up in a reoccurring you know reoccurring in our meetings was that you know again i listen to the stakeholders i ask what they need so that we can execute a program that's the most safe and the most effective and logistically the most possible and you know i get that with right now you know with what we have uh we really can't do that and
038do a do the job of cleaning that we're expected to do and keep within the guidelines of the state i suppose additional resources there are no physical additional resources that we would need we would have to probably increase our staff by 50 percent or maybe even a 100 percent if you figure that we're going to lose three or four hours of their cleaning time in order to do that so the only equation that you know we could do there would be to increase the the staff so that we could move through that much more quickly um you know and that that obviously it has some constraints to it so um you know what we're going to be looking at it we're going to be off you know kind of going through that the next 10
039um or so days you know looking at those global classroom lessons and the admin have been working with the staff um so you know i wasn't getting back that this was a a you know widespread issue and i think we'll be able to you know continue to evolve that wednesday day and look at that that data and and those results of that 10 day kind of review and see where we go from there but it is a constantly evolving process and we're always looking for ways to to make things more engaging while keeping the structure that is keeping us safe and in place anything else are you good um i actually just throw it out there dr willa i don't know if it's an option to hire some of the student part-time workers the summer
040custodians i'm just throwing that out there they're cheaper labor if you will that perhaps um you know they could they could help out on the wednesdays at least in the the two schools but that's just uh just an idea yeah it's it's not a bad one i appreciate that we have uh added to what's called lts like the kind of subs that we bring in right now um similar to what you're asking but um you know obviously we can definitely take a look and we'll continue to look at anything we just we also want to make sure our bottom line is still coming in where we need it to be at the end and um you know it is it we will always be looking and continue to look for ways to to kind of
041make things as efficient as possible for sure great this is a great case for our covet emergency fund so we'll uh we'll see if we need any more of that money so all right thank you very much thanks ashley thank you let's go to jacob okay so first just uh i want to thank all the staff and the teachers and the students and parents for following guidelines and keeping our school district as healthy as it is i think that's um certainly merited um i didn't know if we were going to make it this far with in-person learning but we have and that's that's excellent i did have a question about something you said dr willett about um something the department of public health had going about their is it like a red zone or something
042like that that it's like a trend um they think towns are going a wrong direction could you just elaborate a little bit more on that what the standards are for that yeah the state of connecticut has identified a you know a new methodology where they're going to be um looking at things on the town on the town level um they re-released what's called addendum 4. and so um i posted that um you know updating that in our plan it was released a few days ago and essentially instead of just using the county they're also using the town and proportion of population and towns to uh to identify whether they feel like there's uh there's a problem you know uh brewing in a specific town and they may then provide an alert i think they called
043it a red alert for a town that looks like its numbers are increasing and that there is a there's a you know a need to say for that town uh provide more uh protective measures so a town now if it reaches a certain level of prevalence for its population um and i think they're still doing it in the uh you know the kind of tens if they uh if they reach a certain prevalence now they will go into a more protective mode with respect to restaurants the number of people that can be you know in a space at a certain time those sector rules that the state has put out they will recommend adjusting those sector rules for a smaller area such as a town municipality and then you know try to be more proactive
044and protective that way so addendum 4 should have more of that information and i'll be posting it and i think most of us are just trying to wrap our heads around what that could mean you know in execution if a town goes into a certain status what's a little confusing about it is that there's still a more i don't know how to word this you know the best possible way but um schools within the town are still given um more leeway within those uh those constraints and the reasoning that they gave for that in the last dph meeting was that they felt that the schools at this point um had plans and were more aggressively on top of situations than your average municipality was so they were a little more um they are they're going
045to be a little more um lenient on schools with respect to their hard numbers than they than they will say on a municipality as a whole which sometimes it doesn't seem to make an intuitive sense but from a scientific point of view and from a data point of view to them it does so i'm not criticizing them i'm saying that sometimes you know if you're not involved with the hour meetings you know they go hour or two hour meetings that happen it does not sound like that makes sense but they're relying on you know the level of the the entity to respond effectively and at this point my impression of what they were saying was the schools are in a position where they're doing uh so much of this that they they're they will be
046a little bit and give a little bit more leeway to a school before a health district will recommend shutting down a school even if the town is going into a more protective zone as a larger you know sort of uh unit okay thank you thank you jacob um just to follow up on that dr will i just had a quick question um as you're saying that you know if the schools have to shut down as the if the cases go up um would it just depend on how many cases whether we would go back to hybrid or to remote like um how does that decision take place is that just like is it a numbers game or what what goes in it's just it can it can come from a variety of factors i mean
047if we do exceed that um of um you know 10 to 25 if you go into that zone on a seven day average as the primary indicator say um of above 10 every 100 000 in a in a seven day rotation or average although i think they're moving the average up to a larger number of days but um then then they are recommending you go into hybrid for instance for 10 to 25 and then beyond 25 they're recommending you go into remote and um you know what would happen at that point is if we got to a place like that i would consult with the eastern highland health district and essentially i as a superintendent will likely never go against something that the eastern highland health district is telling me to do or telling me
048is the situation if they felt like you know we needed to go into a hybrid situation in order to safely mitigate um the the current conditions then um i think it would be uh it would be very uh difficult and unadvisable for then a superintendent to say i really don't care what you say uh health district i'm gonna do whatever i want so um it relies very heavily on on where the health district will fall with respect to how it views the status and if it goes above say 10 every 000 then you are in that hybrid status and it would likely mean that we would head into that partial in-person model as a district again above 25 that would mean we'd probably be heading into remote learning for the entire district again and if
049that was how the state was trending the whole state might do a similar thing once again so it's um it's going to rely on that but it's not only that it could also be that if there's a population of students within a school system that ends up being you know coveted positive or close or there are a number of close contacts that can send a large population of a district also out on a quarantine situation um so you know if uh if five kids that you know five kids were coveted positive and they had interactions with many many other kids that could put a number of children out on a quarantined status for 14 days and that could put an entire team out he could put a could have put a class out could put
050a team out could put a grade out could put a school out so it there can be an effect on a school district that um can be rather large even if it doesn't show that kind of prevalence for the uh the county um you know or the the municipal area so uh it really has to do with the local circumstances meaning the school systems population circumstances as well as the county those are the two big things that would probably drive what happens thank you um let's go to plord you pretty much just answered my question i just want to clarify one thing because i remember in track this summer the primary indicator was the threshold 10 to 25 for the county is that has that been changed with this red alert to by town like
051if we look at talland and we're at 10 per 100 000 over the course of seven days or 14 whatever they changed it to is that what moves us in and out of hybrid or is it still the county level it's both now you know but but um they they give a little bit more leeway to school systems within a town it's just adding another layer and a further uh a further just you know kind of disaggregation so in a county if a town is having pretty bad experience then the they're saying now they will give a a what they call they believe a red alert status to that town and that will affect things and it'll depend on why that town got that red alert status so it's actually more like adding another layer
052it's not taking away the the prevalence indicators that were there before it's kind of adding a new layer to that um so uh i was going to see i think i've got addendum 4 up here this was the most recent version of addendum 4. and it talks about how you know you've got the metric for the leading indicators and secondary indicators but the updated addendum 4 will explain how these metrics are used but also go into i believe um i have to go back and kind of get back to that pre-link part here but it also will talk about its um or allude to its new processes with respect to the um the towns and so if they haven't done that in this one they're they've probably added it to the dph site but they
053they you know the state did report out on that fairly recently i think governor um lamont sorry did a um did a public release on this new red alert town by town kind of plan and they are expanding i think their average metrics to provide a 14-day period and there were some changes but it's hard sometimes to track everything because i know they they had changed even travel advisories but then they changed again i believe so i have to go back and look um sometimes even day to day to see you know how things have readjusted but to go back to the base of your question it's not eliminating that it's kind of adding another layer perfect thank you yeah let's go to kate um a couple comments and then a couple questions um the
054wednesday cleaning day um or the a string goodness learning is one of the primary reasons that we have been able to stay open and both of my children have had multiple meetings and synchronous learning activities and opportunities on wednesdays i just want to say that as a board of education we should be asking how to support teachers staff and students in the move to improve the quality of virtual learning and increase student engagement and not asking for more in-person time hiring more folks to do more cleaning will be pointless if an outbreak can occurs wearing masks and now shields all day long is absolutely exhausting for teachers and students not to mention the challenge balancing the technological requirements of providing for in-person students and remote learners wednesday gives everybody a little breathing room literally figuratively
055actually i'm extremely worried that the middle on the high school students will not be able to maintain the necessary social distance given the size of classrooms the number of students returning to school four days a week schools that have been fully in person have been able to stay open because there has been between 20 to 30 percent of the student population electing to stay remote dr willett's numbers here show us about 10 percent putting our average class sizes around 22 to 23 students which is a lot of students so i'm really worried about that i just want to put that out there the question that i have is i heard something on npr and then i'm just talking with other folks that are in this this um in this realm and i'm just wondering if
056the dph has looked at using testing at wastewater at yukon like testing the wastewater to see you know like what the indicator could tell us about what's happening with with our area that's my question no okay i'm sorry no it's okay i i don't know the answer to the wastewater question um i uh i'll have to look into that um so i'll ask but um um you know the and to try to cover swing back around the the dph talks about a series of mitigation strategies um and so does the ehhd or eastern highland health district and so the rationale is that if you have a series of these strategies in place if you don't have the ability to social distance you know say at the six feet per person um you know level that
057you know you if you have the other mitigations in place it can make up for that you know it can uh it can help balance that out and that's the that's the why in why um you know these these organizations will will not uh you know will not say you cannot be in school for you know four days or five days or whatever they will uh generally if the mitigations are in place they will support being in school more often the reason for that is that this you know that that the kids um not being in school there are many many factors that that put kids at a significant risk level for many many things when they're not in school um as often as possible and so that's what i think the ehd and dph
058and others are balancing here they're saying you know right now the vast majority of illness will not be covered i mean the way we look at it and the way things are kind of you know playing out in the news um that's not true everywhere but it is true for where we are right now geographically and so because the vast majority won't be coveted um you know it makes it makes sense to to mitigate the other impacts of of not being in school you know bringing kids in school more often and with the highest frequency we can it helps mitigate the emotional social emotional and even even health related things that impact them if they're not in school right now you know you have to make a generally not i'm not saying you but i
059think they the ehd the dph superintendents others all the stakeholders there that are looking at this you know the decision has to be which of these two things is more perilous for um for the the adolescent and child population right now the more perilous thing of the two even though it does not feel like it makes sense when i say this when you look at national news and what some of the other places are trending as but for our area for our school system and this region right now the more risky thing is not having them in school they are at more peril from not being in school than being in school the maximum number of days possible so um you know keeping in mind the kinds of things that would control the spread or
060try to do that you know within reason so that's why ehd dph and others will support it um and and say that you know when mitigations are in place if that one mitigation can't be achieved if these others are being done that they will and you know endorse or say that we can be in for for instance four days all in so it is not an easy thing i understand it's hard to process and it's an upsetting situation and my my heart is with people for that i have children too and i understand um but you know we we're all trying to make the decisions that we feel are in the best interest of of the kids you know and and um you know we're just uh we're just going to have to get to
061this difficult time so i definitely appreciate the perspectives on it a hundred percent anything else um i'm just k yeah thank you um i'm just curious if there's any plans to do any kind of regular testing at schools i'm guessing not because it's i haven't heard about it but i don't know if there's something different in tallinn county versus hartford county i know that um they're making available some of these rapid tests um no uh and i i'm waiting to see how that plays out you know we've looked at whether we wanted to get the rapid test or not but the problem with it two problems one uh we may not be a priority district to get that that may be more the cities and certain higher density population um areas but the other issue
062is that the rapid test is not as not accurate as my as well the pcr test is far more accurate so um you know there's uh there are a number of concerns with the rapid tests with our kind of situation in a school system it could be useful for certain people um in certain populations that are in my opinion not schools but um you know if the rapid test comes up with false positives or or not you know false negatives um then it's its level of use to us is not super high so i think we just have to i don't think we'd have them made available to us um anyway but um but i i want to see how that's going to go in other places before we we put all our eggs in
063that basket um in tallinn uh right now we follow the dph and ahd guidance which is if there's covet-like symptoms you know we require a pcr test um or an alternative diagnosis from a doctor or the student has to stay out for um for the 10 days which gives the time period for the virus to kind of extinguish itself so following those protocols seems to be um very effective right now for us and uh you know i wouldn't want to um kind of put our our eggs in a in a panacea that that really does not have the effectiveness that we want it to thank you very much sure uh let's go to karen um yeah dr willett um thank you i have appreciated your slow measured data-driven approach to before and during reopening efforts
064i am still concerned about the high school middle school class sizes um because we do have like kate said more kids going back in um however i will just say that the wednesday um you know remote cleaning day has given me pause to appreciate that um because i know that many other districts have not done it that way and they are five days a week so i think that given the circumstances that i do appreciate having that wednesday for cleaning i know there's still some well i don't know i guess that's my question is there still some staffing challenges as far as filling some positions um i know you said you were looking at um attempts and things or um uh subs for custodians um and i'll just say that using kids for cheap labor
065i'm not in favor of because i don't think you want my teenager cleaning the schools um so i'm sorry the first staffing challenges yeah the first part broke up for me a little and i apologize so we do have um you know we are we are in a better place than we were and we're constantly working to you know continue to stay on top of it you know we um we're doing okay right now uh that can change very quickly uh if uh if we turn in prevalence and some of the adults are affected that could very dramatically affect our ability to operate and so um right now we are we're doing okay from a staffing perspective and we have um you know we are constantly uh filling the positions that you know people have
066if people have decided they'd rather do something else you know we're in the hiring process we have hired a number of uh of people to to cover the positions that were vacated um and i have a feeling we'll continue to be doing that you know as we get through the year people may change their mind about uh about working in education you know um there's a there's a feeling about uh you know who's a first responder and who should get the vaccines first and second and third and fourth and i think as the as that evolves and people get a sense of how uh you know how safe they feel in the environment working and that can affect you know who stays in the in the jobs and in the positions and who wants to
067leave and things like that so right now we're enough you know we're managing um and we're providing a safe and effective program but um those things can change so we'll continue to stay on top of that okay thank you sure okay let's go to rainey next um thank you um so just a couple of very quick comments i just wanted to thank you dr willard i appreciate all the time and effort you've put in to just endless meetings research and you know trying to sift through and come up with the best solution for for the kids and for the staff it's trying to make everybody happy is not not an easy assignment so i do appreciate um all of that that you've taken on um i i just want to reiterate and i know i've
068already kind of reached out to you on this a little bit but i just wanted to say i have been said several times about you know concern about loss of time that the students have had in school and so forth and you know this new program i love that you know they're going to have more face time with the teachers that's great um still a little concerned about more loss of instruction time and i just kind of wanted to say i understand what griffin was saying about the wednesdays because i have heard other residents kind of comment about you know wednesday's kind of not being very um fulfilling or that's not the right word but um as as as great as they could be or you know the kids are kind of done real quickly
069um so i would be very supportive of measures that you're taking to evaluate that and see um if we can't do synchronous at least for a couple hours in the morning or something what can be done to you know continue to make that really a good experience for the kids and make it enriching um so that's really just i wanted to throw that out there sure i understand okay um let's go to tony yeah dr willett uh again i certainly like and appreciate all the work that your staff is doing this has been incredibly difficult and there's nothing short of amazing coming out of these schools uh rainey brought a good question of mine and then you know i know i'm asking assumptions here but what is that next step if numbers stayed the same
070and this worked out is the plan to stay at the four-day um indefinite or is there another level up well um and thank you for asking the question the the tallinn public school pandemic continuity of learning plan currently has a another level that is more in in person than this one it's a five day um and so uh you know it is there is a step that you could go to as a district beyond the four day um the what what it would take to get us there uh i think would would be some very significant um you know shifts within the districts around us and also you know um in an end would require obviously our prevalence to you know stay at least the same for the span of time that we're in so
071uh there is another level up from the four day um and it's the five day uh you do in that level trade away that wednesday as a remote day and as a cleaning day and so that's a pretty big shift for us so we would have to um you know we would have to see the prevalence at least staying the same or or going down around us um the availability of a vaccine could obviously send us into the five-day if it were distributed and you know you know you know some time had gone by and people were feeling good about it and and the trends were moving in a very positive direction around us you know in our county and locally um so i that is there is one step above where we are right
072now okay and make no mistake i am in no hurry to move away from the four i personally think the four is a pretty good plan i just wanted to understand the sign picture thank you sir thank you tony uh lord i see your hand is that a new one or is that no it's a new one i just wanted to say i've talked to a lot of people about the wednesdays as a working parent um for the k for kindergartner i personally like the wednesday asynchronous it's easy for him to go to his his old daycare you know part of our inner circle so we're not increasing our risk going somewhere else you know the struggle is for me if there was synchronous learning she's screen free so i tend to do his work
073at night or in the morning or on the weekend when when we can do it um so that would be the i think the struggle in the k-5 if it went to synchronous um if i think other districts i do know one teacher has done synchronous learning he's a high school teacher from home he's had office hours and google meets or whatever so i don't know if something could be done there um at the higher grades if we feel there's a disconnect but um i do like the wednesdays i think if we look at other districts um you know there's quarantines there's shutdowns there's this and that and it is inevitable that we will have cases in town uh and so i think that the wednesdays have been part of our success and you know
074and i attribute that to you know dr willett's meetings that i've been on with the covid team as as the meetings called and listening to everybody and what their opinions are um but then i do agree with lots of learning time i mean i think covet in general just has caused a loss of learning time all around uh so the more learning time we can get obviously the better but um thank you dr willett for everything and that's my two cents on the wednesdays oh and if we did hire kids to come in and clean the high school i would i fully would trust them i think that uh you know they've worked there before okay uh let's go to kate um i just need to say um regarding the wednesday um dr willa do
075we have any input from the school administration students and teachers about how wednesdays are going we seem to be citing anecdotal and random screening sampling from people and i'm just wondering if we actually have any evidence about which to make assumptions of about wednesday i um no then the answer is no but you know like this person told me or i think this or whatever i mean that's not that's not productive for our conversations here we should be looking at the entire district and not just what our random friends say to us i um when i talk to the administrators about this exact issue and we are in a constant process of evaluating program and and uh and how we're doing things and so on uh i made it a explicit conversation with the administrators
076not only prior but also very recently um the administrators in the report that i got back uh they are not reporting that they are receiving many complaints about the asynchronous uh remote wednesdays um the information i got back from the administrators was that these would be these were fairly positively received and that as has been noted in the meeting there are feelings about the asynchronous as well there are families that feel that they they need it to be that way on wednesdays um and that it is uh you know it's something that they appreciate because of the timing and the availability of technology in in the family's homes and how much sharing they have to do in their own homes so um people feel very strongly about this in the communities in you know in
077various ways um but what i got back from admin was that you know they weren't hearing many complaints or at all actually and that they felt like it was going fairly well but i think it makes sense for us to you know to do a sort of uh you know quasi-qualitative quant you know qualitative sort of review um of uh of a series of randomly selected uh google classrooms and just uh and just see how it's going um again i i think the teachers are doing an amazing job um and i think it's just uh it's typical for us we would normally as administrators be walking into classrooms and visiting with teachers so we're just kind of virtually doing that but um after about 10 days i should get their feedback on on those randomly
078selected rooms so to speak and uh and we should be able to have some additional information about how that's going so uh you know i expect that we'll just keep on that horse and continue to keep reviewing it okay um i just wanted to remind the board of education that we should be asking ourselves how to support teachers staff administration and students and how to move improve i'm sorry and how to improve the quality of virtual learning and increase student engagement and not just passively pushing for more in-person time because that seems to be the the mode here so i'm just i'm annoyed that we're not listening to the teachers and to the administrators and what's happening in the schools that's it you think um let's go to uh griffin do you think maybe we
079could hear from the students since they have their hands up i think i do but i'm board members have already had their chance actually let's you know but this is the one who said let's move the meeting over we are going to move the meeting along karen and i'm sorry but all other board members have had second times griffin gets her second time and then we can hear from the students but thank you uh griffin thank you ashley um i just wanted to clarify that i am not looking to have in person wednesdays i am strictly just asking dr willett if there's a way we can enhance wednesdays i think that was a word that we used for our remote learning so that's exactly what i'm kind of asking is what can we do for
080our students to enhance their remote learning wednesdays and it is synchronous an option so i just wanted to clarify that because i think there was some confusion that i might have been asking to get the students in school on wednesday and that's not what i was going for so um thank you ashley okay thank you um if we can have uh summer and alexandra next up there we go as someone who's like you know like a student or actually part of this um wednesdays for me so far have just been really relieving um teachers do assign work on that day and they answer the emails really fast if we have any questions and it's like a good way for us to get a break because it's really hard to learn when you really can't do
081group work and you have masts on all the time and it's a good mental health break for me especially for people for kids in high school because we're going through college stuff we're taking ap classes and it's just we kind of like push pushed into like wearing a mask doing social distancing so i feel like the wednesday is like it's like a good thing that we get lighter work because we need that mental health break and i believe that everyone deserves it too thank you thank you this is gonna kinda go with that um i'd say the same i also know that most of my teachers at least always are holding like what they're calling office hours um so if we want to have synchronized work with them or like just time with our teachers
082they're always available and then it's also been really helpful i'm a part of the b group so like it's been helpful like catch up on stuff because working at home isn't always the most productive so having that time for asynchronous really i don't have to be online at any certain time has really given me like the opportunity to like do other things like today i had tutoring with someone like i was tutoring today like i had more time to do things that i'd uh happy to to entertain them and to answer everything that i can so um this this presentation also includes a a little of um you know board of ed participation so that i i can give you kind of a perspective on how some of the conversations goes before i get into
083exactly what we're doing um i want to cover the the whys and the whats um sorry hold on me is that you it's my computer telling me that it needs to be restarted so i'm praying that it doesn't need to be restarted right now i'm uh it's good to know that because i'm like is my battery dying i'm not getting a message i end up disappearing i think one of you becomes the host and just go with it okay it sounds good but in any case um so so there'll be a little bit of participation but it gives you a sense of the why and the what so the first part of the presentation is the you know the why and the what and then the next part of the presentation is is uh what's
084happening right now in time so um as as per you know any effort in culturally responsive education or any kind of education of the kind you know these are ongoing efforts they they never end it's not like there's an end point to it it's a it's a constant state of of moving forward constantly putting programs down getting you know expert advice input and um and then going back and reevaluating um we're not always going to do things right you know that's that's part of the process in growth part of the process and growth is beginning to understand ourselves better beginning to understand our institutions and our structures um and then you know reviewing them in a constant state of review to see how we can continue to evolve how can you know how we can
085continue to make the program better more inclusive um you know and move from you know a state of state tolerance to a state of actively trying to change you know how things work in favor of children in favor of the the country and moving education forward so the the what and the why of culturally responsive education um i'll cover just just in the first five minutes so as i said you know it's a process of fundamentally understanding things you know trying to get a constant better understanding of how people feel what their background experiences are what their lived experiences are and then you know look at it implement programs to address it and then reflect on those programs how are they working how are people experiencing them and then once again going back into the
086cycle of uh of you know coming to a better understanding then reimplementing and again going into uh reflection so it's never like there is an end it's always a constant um constant process so before i go any further just really really quick and if you know what this is do not say it if you are aware because some of you have already seen this and we've already done some of that but if you uh if you don't know what it is um tell me what you think this is maybe raise your blue hand if you're a board member and you know unless miss uh no miss longering you could include anyone you wanted but that's you know what do you think it is there is no wrong answer you will not do not google it
087you cannot google it that is not fair anybody have to say secret service earpiece all right all right that's secrets if we know we're not supposed to say no because that that no because you might have already you know we might have already done that but if you know don't say but if you don't know done anything with it but okay any other thoughts on it i see some shaking of heads just it just throw out there anything there's no wrong answers okay i gotta say tony was looking at this like quite i wish i had a screenshot of that one it looks like an electrical lead an electrical lead okay i think it looks like an eraser wheelie thing or something but then i don't know what the blue stuff is on the top
088so i don't know i was gonna go with wheel but i agree i don't know what the blue fringy stuff is okay a wheel all right so let's take some of those um you know a secret service earpiece got that a an electrical lead um an eraser thing which i think was uh you know it was good and a wheel you know a wheel so what this actually is is a typewriter eraser it's a monument in washington dc you can see it on the mall and one of the reasons it's there is that it is something that most people of a certain generation are unfamiliar with um you did the erasing with the part that looks like a wheel and you brushed off the uh you know the remnants of what you erased with the
089i think the it was described as the blue thingies on the top so that is a typewriter eraser but sometimes we'll use this kind of presentation or this kind of example to give a idea of what bias can be you know it doesn't mean that you're biased against the this object it just means that your mental models your schemas you know your lived experiences the things you've experienced in your life um what you've learned about you brought that to bear on your analysis of what this object was and so you know tony looking at it as an electrical lead because he's an engineer and you know others looked at it as a wheel and things like that you know that is your mental model of what that is um you're not aware of what this
090actually is so you know as you get more experience and you learn more about say typewriters or typewriter erasers you're able to identify the object for what it actually is but before you can do that you're bringing in your own lived experiences to do that and sometimes our own lived experiences do not give us enough information to make an accurate portrayal of a thing and we do the same thing with human beings you know if we don't have a lot of experience with uh people that don't you know that are uh that are different or have a different background than us we can make false you know we will naturally draw impressions of people from things like media or other things that will not be accurate just like we will look at an object and
091see it as a secret service earpiece or see it as a wheel or something like that they're inaccurate they're not um they're not ridiculous observation but they're inaccurate and so we do that to people so one of the starting points for it is that just recognizing that human beings organize information if a object or a person it comes you know into our you know sensory area we will automatically analyze that object or that person that is what our brains do and we will automatically bring into it our lived experiences to process that the the tough part about connecticut right now with its school systems are that they're very segregated so our students do not really have a really good understanding of each other they bring into the picture of what they think of each other
092um what they uh perceive it from movies or media or things like that and those those those kinds of uh ways of you know processing the information that are natural to all human beings will lead to mis misinterpretations and misunderstandings of what people are actually like so the the purpose of this responsive education model is to make sure that we reflect ourselves on our own thinking processes that we approach people understanding the human propensity to misunderstand each other based on limited information so when we talk about culturally responsive education one of the first things we have to talk about is how the human brain works and how bias works bias is a natural part of our human thinking it is how we experience the world and what we bring to bear on on how we
093understand other people and other things so it doesn't make a person evil because they have bias we essentially all have bias and so being able to overcome that means actively thinking about that questioning our own perceptions questioning how much experience we have with something before we cast a judgment about a thing or a person and so that is part of the training of culturally responsive education is to say hold on take a minute is this really are we accurately seeing this for what it is do we have all the information to be able to make uh an informed decision or judgment about um this this person and so it gets people thinking about that so we talk about you know psja we talk about sengay talk about the availability heuristic you know human beings tend
094to jump to conclusions that are fast conclusions and not necessarily you know deeply processing it it kept us alive when we were cave people because when you saw a bear you saw the bear and you knew the bear would like you know come after you but it does not help us in our modern age as much because we're still making those fast quick impressions that we naturally do as human beings but you know that doesn't always give us the correct impression of what that individual you know is about so it just tom asks people to constantly be reflecting on it and the research says that we can break our unconscious prejudices and biases if we are trying actively to do so if we become aware of them if we're concerned about that you know the
095studies show that if you're really concerned and you want to overcome it you can if you don't just sort of push it off or dismiss it there's a really good chance human beings working hard to overcome it can but we do have to work hard to overcome it that's the point so that is what uh partially what that you know the uh kind of responsive education and cultural response of education is about so general rules for concert you know this kind of education for adults when we're training with adults and again this is all developmentally you know developmental model sensitive um you're not going to go at it the same way with say a kindergarten or a first grader as you would a room full of adults but when we're dealing with a room full
096of adults which is one of the domains in which we work you know we talk to staff first we talk to community first that kind of thing there's a difference between say safety and comfort everybody is um has a right to safety everyone should feel safe you should feel safe from physical harm you should feel safe from emotional abuse or harm or insults none of that has any place in any kind of responsive education or cra training but comfort comfort is different than safety comfort is not assured it's not even desirable in a lot of cases in order for us to be able to grow we have to be able to question our thoughts about it you know question our mental models question the schemas question the impressions we have and really look deeply at
097whether they are you know reflective of the reality or not and so discomfort occurs when beliefs and perceptions are challenged when there's cognitive dissonance but that's an important part of the process is that you know we won't always be comfortable sometimes there'll be some uncomfortable conversations and we have to be profession as you know professionals and be um be ready to to have those uncomfortable conversations other things about cre when it's done effectively is that people have to practice self-soothing you know that it's hard sometimes not to feel attacked or to feel victimized and that the idea is that the participants have to make sure that um they don't make the conversation about themselves you know for instance they don't distract the group by you know having people have to turn and soothe them because
098they are having trouble with the concept that people need to be able to self-soothe you know that that they they don't necessarily draw all the attention to themselves in the room during one of these trainings because if they do they take the time and the focus off of the training at hand so part of cre is getting people to understand that even if you don't you know if you're feeling irked by this let the process play out talk respectfully to each other you know that kind of thing but don't you know the idea is to try to avoid making oneself the center of attention um drawing energy and drawing time away from the activity at hand and sometimes the time is limited if you have a two-hour workshop and you know some there's a lot
099of time spent trying to soothe everybody then you don't really get that that workshop done and so it's you know it's designed to be a safe environment but not one that takes the attention off of getting the the work at hand done and finally when there are members of a minority group in the population um it's important not to have those individuals relive trauma just for the benefit of the group so for instance you know sometimes there's this inclination to say okay well you know you're the black guy in the room what do you think about this you know it is um sometimes that's just not fair and somebody you know you have to be careful not to ask people to relive trauma in their own lives for the benefit of educating the group the
100the structure should be set up that there are conversations and cases that are presented without asking people to necessarily have to share their own traumas because sometimes that really hurts and it can create a situation where you're you know unfairly relying on certain marginalized or other members of the of the group to sort of educate the group and instead that can happen through a a more safe process sometimes um and that has to be paid attention to when working with adults and working with other populations and of course with kids as well so you know the idea behind cre is to go from say the traditional idea of tolerance to more of an idea of solidarity so when you think about it when we've seen these kind of ideas about tolerance you know what does
101tolerance really mean um you know and if i were you know doing this in a longer kind of uh interaction or lesson with people i would ask them to define tolerance you know what do you think tolerance is and typically that conversation would come out as you know tolerance is sort of like uh and i i absolutely love my mother-in-law so i'm not saying anything but people tolerate their fam you know certain members of their family right i i love her but but i'm saying like people will say you know i tolerate this person you know tolerate if you were to say hey mom you know i tolerate you you know if you say hey mom i love you that means something different than hey mom i tolerate you tolerate somebody means sort of like
102you know you're not going to oppose them uh you know there's no real value there but you know you identify this person as other than yourself and the focus of it is me i tolerate you moving to another level it's respect and kind of affirmation it's more of moving to the next level of appreciation you need more information to be able to appreciate to tolerate that's the minimum you can get out of a human being um without you know things getting you know not pref you know not kind but um respect and affirmation is the next level up from that you know you know about the culture uh there's a respect for the culture it stops short of advocacy you may not go out and advocate for the same things that that culture represents but
103that you have an appreciation for it you're aware of the holiday you know when it happens you know you have a sense of the history of the group um you know you know about that history and you respect it and you have an understanding a broader understanding and respect for the the person in front of you um and then the highest level is a solidarity not only do you have a respect for the person in front of you and a knowledge of that individual but you are willing to advocate them as advocate for them as if it were for yourself um that's sort of the highest level where you know this may not be your lived experience but that you feel such a sense of connectedness to the other individual that you have solidarity with
104them you're willing to take on you know the advocacy of their cause because you feel that it is humanly right and you you relate to that and that's where you get to the level and the center of focus of us we are working on behalf of each other and we have a great understanding and respect of each other but beyond that i'm willing to fight for you you're willing to fight for me and we need you we want to take care of each other actively so when you're looking at something like cre you're looking at trying to reach the level where there's not just a tolerance of one another there's not just a respect and knowledge of each other but that you really are working hard and fighting for each other that you have each
105other's backs so to speak that you care about the other person's needs as much as you care about your own and that is the highest level of a responsive education so you know the idea is you know what do we tolerate moving from tolerance to respect and understanding you know moving to a point where people you know are caring about each other's interests as much as they care about their own so there's a short video here by the nea that um this is the national education association it is the uh one of the largest uh you know teachers unions and groups i can play that video which is basically about marley diaz it's a quick ad from you know the tea that they put out there or i can just keep moving through it um
106you know madam chair do you want me to kind of play that video it's about two minutes or i can just keep moving through i'm sorry i was muted um if you want to play it that's fine as long as you have the capabilities and your computer won't shut off click it all right let's uh let us hope that that this goes off the way that i'm hoping so i'm going to change the screen sharing and i will play this quick video and it should have sound to uh right so it's from the national education association um and it talks about you know the institutional uh struggles of school systems and it uses marley diaz who is a young student who advocated for more material that reflected um you know reflected reflected a true and
107broader sense of of the community so here's a quick video that that sometimes used when you know as a as a conversation starter hi i'm riley dyess i'm 11 years old a lot of grown-ups think that opportunities exist for all kids and all we need to do is apply ourselves but i know that's just not true it shouldn't matter if you live in the city or suburbs on a farm or a reservation or what your zip code may be but it does there's still rules to keep our schools separate and unequal why [Applause] we spend a lot of time talking about whether what someone says or does is racist but that's not enough you're not liking me for the color of my skin is not the only thing that can affect my chances for success
108i'm talking about the built-in barriers that keep me and other kids from reaching our full potential it's all around us we might not recognize it even when it's right under our noses [Music] like remember that time i had to start a campaign just to get books in my library about kids who look like me do you care enough to look closer to talk to each other to your students to your communities we've got to change the dialogue because when we do you'll be amazed by all we can accomplish i'm looking at you [Music] so that is um that is a conversation starter i might use that as part of something when we're beginning and so let me just uh make sure i get back um this other piece here one second um right there all
109right so we should be looking good grammar and spelling are important but if you want okay all right that's the problem with youtube is you never know what you're gonna get next so i'm just trying to knock that out okay so um so basically you know that would be a conversation starter for instance in one of the you know the meetings that we might have and so we would begin you know view that start talking as well as a series of other videos that um we've used um in different resources so again culturally responsive ed to do the why to do the what it's recognizing bias in ourselves it's how we can try to stop a perpetuation of disadvantaged and certain you know marginalized populations and groups and be very focused on making sure things
110are fair and equitable and um and it's recognizing in ourselves you know how we approach individuals and people and trying to be actively always working against the biases that we might naturally bring to a situation when we don't necessarily have a lot of experience with other people that are of that background um so it's a it's a constant as i said ongoing effort so now just to segue into the cre kind of activities that uh we've been working on in tallant they have to do with basically a couple of categories that i put in here staff presentations and trainings presentations for other organizations in the state that i've done and that we've had other staff engage in culture and climate uh subcommittee work uh surveys data review and planning curriculum embedded literature partnerships and cooperative
111activities and these are all ways that we're actively working to continue to evolve you know how we understand and um and what we do so that we're moving again from that tolerance kind of uh state of being to a to a deep understanding and to a better you know better a better way of approaching problems that um that reflects a solidarity an active feeling of wanting to to really uh understand and help other people the way that we wanted to be or helped ourselves so i'll go over uh you know briefly the efforts um starting in that you know kind of year of 1617 although there were efforts prior to that um this is just so you know as a quick overview there are a series of sessions and trainings that were done um in
112the district you know academic behavior social emotional development normalizing difference asset to try these are all presentations designed to help familiarize people with all of the things that i talked about before in brief um and to move us to a point of looking at how we did things and looking at how we can evolve them to be more inclusive to be more restorative and to to be mindful of difference um so on top of that we also did faculty presentations so these are overall district ones given to everyone and then we did individual faculty presentations um brought in various groups to do that um in this case dr gerald harrison um through crack also he was part of a number of different organizations at the time as well and he did presentations for the staff
113that also helped bring us to a better understanding on on things like academic identity meaning how one sees themselves and their own prospects for uh success has a lot to do with their cultural background and the kind of interactions they have with other people and so on so that in short is just a general description but these programs were extensive um and and you know were provided through all the buildings in addition to that we went through a process with the capital region education council and the open choice program to really look at all of our operations in the schools go through our buildings look at how welcoming our buildings were do a review of special education do a review of practices they visited our board of education meetings um this was all done in
114that general span of time as we started our relationship with the open choice program and um you know it provided a lot of insights i think the principals found it really uh helpful as did a lot of other staff and reflecting on things that we would not have otherwise thought about um it added a number of different perspectives that um you know had we not kind of you know had that exposure to people that are not typically attending town public schools we would not have been able to have the insights that came out of that process so it was part of the crv efforts part of the cra process and you know it was really like a kind of audit for the school system in our buildings 1617 we continued that relationship with additional trainings
115um you see those dates here december 9th the 20th february 28th and there were a number of uh open meetings in public workshops they also re-engaged the boe at that time there were book clubs and family outreach outreach activities and um you know we engaged in those our administrators engaged in that we went through and uh you know read literature discussed it and did these common kind of activities and plannings and trainings and we developed an open choice five-year projection that we we used to talk a lot more about the past but we're right along the lines of what we had been talking about during that time um cre implementation once again you know that you know the idea being that we really want it to be a safe environment too that there is no
116need for a child or group to experience trauma in an effort to help others learn so you know with that in mind we really were careful as we walked into the next steps and we started to talk more and more about this in student populations that we were not creating any traumatic experiences and i don't think you know anybody can do anything 100 perfectly but i think that you know having that in mind did help us as we approached you know different activities to make sure that you know we weren't if you were the one child in the class that was of a certain background that you were not you know constantly accessed as the representative for the your entire you know race or her group so we were trying you know very careful to
117try to do that in a way that did not you know create trauma or uh discomfort and again nothing is 100 perfect but you we were advised and worked very hard towards that end so in 17 and 18 you know we continued to do additional work within the schools and develop practices the cre committees and culture you know cultural climate committees started to develop in school programs and presentations um and you know to this day birch grove has had a sear in many of them um you know each of these individual committees and individual buildings provided even more trainings and activities so what you see here is only a fraction of what ended up happening at the school level with the local cc uh the culture and climate committees for instance and so on um
118you know in addition to that you know as we entered the period say of birch growth construction you know that did throw a little bit of a wrench into efforts but they still continue and that team is working really hard um you know covet obviously threw a wrench in our operation but you know to the to the extent that you know we've never let go of this you know there are things that get in the way but that we constantly work to continue to provide both presentations on the district level and the committees working locally are providing you know programs at the local level meaning when i say local i mean at school level as well um and more you know as we moved into 18 19 and 20 um we had many many more
119programs and expanded our efforts so um you know as as i kind of give you some examples here um you know we had a true colors program come in and you know did a number of faculty presentations we did a special administrator work groups and presentations and the board of education was involved also as you may recall some of you in that true colors program so it's yet another example and additional community workshops on it as well um in addition to that from 2018 to 2020 2021 many workshops were established for both community and for faculty and staff yukon panel discussion of systemic racism and education resilience program and these dates are in here too talking about gender the voices from our schools which some of you are very familiar with from june upcoming ones
120are let's talk about race and schooling which will happen in december um and there's a special workshop that will happen on understanding black lives matter um which is uh you know which i think you know out there people really don't have a good understanding of that and so we'll be bringing in people to present on that they can give a very you know deep understanding of it and also uh we're working on establishing relationships and partnerships uh currently we work with a graduate group student you know students who have graduated and moved on and at this point most of them actually have graduated from college as well so they're full-fledged adults and they are they are working in a group with me i mean others to con to look at evaluate their own lived experiences
121in the thailand public schools express those give us insights about what their educational experience was like many of them did graduate years ago say in 2016 2015 2014 but um you know that they've been they've been able to provide really good perspectives upon which we can constantly evolve our programs and our restorative practices um the youth and justice department grant we received a you know we applied and got a hundred thousand dollar grant that we've been applying to this work there's a skills for adolescence class um and most recently we're working on a common ground a program for the high school where literally it is the common ground where we bring people together to you know to work on eliminating bias and to work on coming together as people to go from that tolerance to
122solidarity to advocacy to fighting for each other and most recently i'm working on a relationship with the correct teacher in residency program to try to increase the you know diversity um of of um of our staff as well as as the student body you know and get you know get groups working together so you know this is an example off to the right that graphic on your screen of um one of the programs uh and yukon uh you know those were the individuals joseph cooper marco han um shyla and i think it's uh numely these are individuals that were professors at uconn who helped come and and do the program with and for us so we do pull in you know a series of different representations and and uh from different organizations to help with
123uh with the process overall and as part of it i also have presented at correct workshops you know with the work that we've done in the district um they've asked us to come and present at certain you know workshops and things like that to talk about the schools and so you know this was one of the ones that uh was offered by craic um that was moderated by dr harrison and and i participated in so it's both about working in the schools and also you know expanding out into uh programs like correct one of the most the largest regional um you know education centers there's a bunch of them in uh connecticut craic is one of the biggest um you know and working in in cooperation with that organization to uh to you know both
124participate in workshops and also have them come in and deliver them with and for us so i wanted to give you some basic results this is kind of overload i know that so i'm not you know i'm not asking you to sort of just absorb the whole thing but essentially the red and the blue are the strongly agree and the agree so you can see that the response to most of these items from the student population from the first sections of the the resurrected skills for adolescence course um the the red and the blue was the affirmative the the agree or strongly agrees so you can see that the red and blue is the majority of um of the students with the you know the green and the purple as the strongly disagrees but most
125of these questions you know what i learned in the class helped me understand how my brain works and can influence decision-making or how emotional intelligence can be important or how a person's implicit biases can distort how they view other people or you know help me understand how implicit biases can um some of them are repeated but you understand race racism and understand bullying and how to avoid bullying you know some of the you know taking good and bad risks again the red and the blue is the affirmative agree or strongly agree that it helped them and so um you know these are all different data points um and you know the the results that we got for uh for both talking about implicit biases and talking about bullying and and talking about risky behaviors and
126even this one about i will be less likely to vape or use drugs because of what i learned in this class you know that red and blue in that particular one in the middle column was very very powerful you know that that had a big impact so the results from our uh first go around of the scott classes i called them ska because i was trying to be cool but obviously made that entirely uncool in that process but the the point is that you know it was resurrecting that skills for adolescence course that made such a big difference in the past but we had lost because of budget so um that that funding that i talked about that hundred thousand helped us resurrect this and get this back going again and it lives today and
127additional counseling resources exist because of it as well so that's uh you know this is additional work on that we've been doing and most recently as we are in the 2020 2021 zone and it has to do with uh you know resurrecting those classes that can make a difference in how kids see the world and how they experience their own education and helping each other going from that tolerance to that advocacy solidarity and you know the common ground stuff the relationships with open choice the relationships with the teacher and residency program those are all the uh the the most recent current initiatives that are part of our process today so um you know certain books that have been published on this they're being used now in school systems i threw an example of that here
128and also social emotional learning the district is engaged in a process of three years to expand our our efforts in social emotional learning so i threw that in here as well because it does dovetail with um with cre and you can see the results of this kids survey they did talk about how you know getting exposed and understanding social emotional learning emotional regulation things like that were important in learning how to best uh deal with each other when they don't agree or when there's things that are upsetting you know understanding social emotional learning emotional regulation how to how to assess their own emotions helps them deal with other people better so this is uh part of a three-year program where we're implementing social emotional learning um and the ruler training and things like that into
129our own operations um you know like i said this particular piece cove had put a little bit of a dampener on what we were able to do last summer last spring into the year but we're still on that horse and we're still working hard to try to to get where we need to go with it so that that wraps up the presentation for this evening i think i hit that in about 20 maybe a little more but um that that should give you a good overview of you know the what the why and essentially what we've been doing most recently now thank you very much for this um i think it's important for us to have a understanding of what is happening in the schools i know that 2016 2015 was when you took over
130as superintendent so i know you've put a lot of effort into this so i really thank you for that um one of the first questions i have are you know like what kind of the programs are available for like the board of ed to have for cultural awareness and have those discussions are like is there what's what's available what's out there what's yeah i think that i think that's a great idea uh miss lundgren that that we would do you know do these kinds of things and work with the board um and that's great to mention it um so yeah there are many programs that are offered by the capital region education council and other groups and they would be they would be more than happy and willing and do regularly work with boards of
131education to do this kind of work um awareness work responsive education work because it's it's really uh um you know it's an all hands in kind of thing so i think that's a great uh idea of having this kind of uh these kinds of presentations being brought to the board and have the board participate in these activities as well and i can set that up um you know every third meeting or fourth meeting or on certain intervals i think that would be uh that would be great you know i think of having a range of different topics to kind of hit and go through because obviously our purview is our school systems and our children so you know it's a good to have a better understanding of you know what is actually being said you
132know i had a kid with the skills of adolescence he did not have you as a teacher he got in right after so i don't know about your sky teaching but you know he's probably lucky he's lucky he's gotten his uh you know los angeles she's good perfect let me open it up to the board members uh kate um just first of all thank you for all of your efforts and culturally responsive education um when i say that it's life-saving i'm not engaging in hyperbole i just had a quick question i was just curious about there was that well i mean you had to go and get the the grant to pay for it because we didn't put it into the budget um for various and sundry reasons but in that little gap time when
133we didn't have this class and didn't have the the focus on um culturally responsive education like as a class uh what did you see any do we have any evidence or did you do you know of any issues that kind of bubbled out you know like what did the kids lose out on yeah um you know and there was a span of time where um there were some tough budget years and i'm recalling them as something like 2008 910 there was sort of uh i think that was the time there were a couple of really tough ones and in that time we lost teen leadership we lost skills for adolescents um we lost some of these programs that uh really helped you know at a very crucial developmental time address some of the the needs
134of the kids in terms of their you know their um their growth in that area and so we did notice the difference you know coming out 11 12 13 14 15. one of the things that um that became pretty uh you know pretty obvious to me working with the admin and as a principal and then into a superintendent is that you know the loss of those programs really did impact us um they went along the same also the state dropped the dare program um that was no longer supported in the same way so it was almost like during the state you know certain uh you know series of years in one fell swoop we lost a lot of programs that helped students you know in in uh you know life-saving and even um you know
135life management ways um and so we saw an uptick in all kinds of behaviors that um are un you know unproductive um not not helpful towards each other and um and so you know it was obvious when i came in i felt a strong need to to bring you know things that would help address what what we had lost and what i was seeing and others were seeing as a sort of trend in undesirable behavior not only just individually for kids but towards each other so um i think we're headed in the right direction here um obviously i don't claim to have this this process has not solved all issues but i think we're we're in a much better trajectory than where we were um directly after the impact of losing all of those programs
136at once um or or in this you know a small span of time so we're we're heading um in the right direction and again there's no end it's always a constant um review and trying to make sure those resources are there so i feel that we are you know heading in the right place um just a quick follow-up and then i will stop talking but um question about the graduates did they um graduates of this you know that you're working with um what kind of perspectives have they told you about with regard to when they leave talland and the bubble that is talent well you know it's interesting you should use the word bubble um there were we did do an activity with the board of ed at one point i forget was a year
137or two years ago or something and the students did they they just out of their own volition you know they they used that exact term they identified that they felt like when they were here they were in a sort of bubble and that they they really when they went out into the world things were uh quite different and that they really weren't feeling prepared and i've seen that you know not saying academically per se but really more like when they're working with diverse groups of people um that are different than themselves people that they haven't had that much exposure to that they found some of that more difficult and that you know they felt like they were living in a quote-unquote bubble and so that has been a theme i have seen that with the
138graduated uh individuals that i talked to as a group um there are actually a subset of that group that um that don't feel like they they uh they just don't feel yet like they can have more public conversations about it because they felt so marginalized that they just uh you know they're difficult they just understandably don't want to really interact on the topic anymore and so that group i feel sad about because the they felt so marginalized that they have no desire to have any connection with it anymore at all and um you know i'm hoping that someday i can draw them back in and and we can benefit from their their experience their lived experience and and we can continue to improve but the the other uh larger group right now of the graduates
139are really helping uh inform you know some of the things through their lived experiences we are able to make some significant adjustments and uh you know we're still in the process of doing that but it's been immensely helpful to have had the access and to have had these conversations so i thank them you know thank them profusely and uh you know we've been working with that and the common ground organization is something that um is coming uh from you know to fruition because of those conversations as an example also we're evaluating things like our pep rallies um our pep rallies have had some some reason to be thoughtful about them and to reflect on them and that's another example of when we hear from people that have graduated you know they point to certain things
140and say you know you really might want to think about this and how this this was executed and how this felt and you know and it helps so again it's uh it's a crucial group to be talking to thank you uh just another quick comment and not really looking for input um just a statement really um i do believe that this work is so important uh to keep doing it i want to commend you for figuring out how to keep doing it even in these uh last couple of years uh i think that it's so crucial to the mental health of our students that they can feel efficacious not only in their own bubble as as we said but also in in the greater world so just thank you on that that's it sure and
141and to be clear i want to um you know i really appreciate the hard work that has been done by our staff on this and by uh our administrators by our teachers by our faculty by our uh you know parents and all um they've played a very active process in it um the the main thing that i that i have done is is listened i i've done my very best to to listen and do less talking more listening with the you know populations that have had that lived experience so they all deserve the credit um and i am just basically listening and trying to adapt to what they're saying it's their lived experiences and the students um faculty and those that are really making the day-to-day difference so they deserve all of the credit think
142you uh let's go to karen um dr will it really quick um the ruler training is that um that's through mark brackett right and the yale center for emotional intelligence i'm not sure if i got that right no you're right it is and it is exactly that work he does work in industry for emotional intelligence a book out there called emotional intelligence 2.0 but developed a program specifically for schools called ruler and that that's the program we're looking to i explored it when i was a principal with staff that i sent but we are also exploring it as a district as as you saw at the end of that slide um yes i did hear him speak at the cave conference in the past um and he did some workshops while he was there as
143well and he talked about that so i do recall from that um so we those conferences are uh helpful and cabe does bring some great speakers like mark to the table i was just going to ask how how can the board continue to support you and our admins and staff and you know continue to set them up for success because um i think administrators especially need to know that their school board has their backs and um it's important to to understand that this is continuous work obviously from your presentation and there's been a lot going on over the years um so continuing to do the work and it's not just one single moment it is a process and it's continuous so how can we as a board um i guess help in supporting that yeah
144um i uh i'll answer that let me uh do a quick thing dana i noticed that miss philbin joined um i think that our uh lisa wants to know the time so that she can kind of include that do you know can you just give me an idea what time you just jumped in hi sorry um i was i've probably been in for about five minutes so i'd say 9 25 p.m lisa perfect thank you i just lisa there you go all right thank you thank you um so obvious you know the we work as a team you know uh we learn we learn together i think one of the ways that the board can you know support the efforts um that the admin are making um is to do what uh you know to
145do to do what uh london said there you know if the board participating in these activities uh really will help evolve the entire district it helps us move forward together because if we don't have common understandings of the issues that we face and you know and the work that we're doing then um you know then it can cause division and it can cause sort of uh you know sort of an unraveling of of the the solidarity moving from that tolerance to solidarity and fighting for each other so i think one of the most important things is for the board to engage in activities that um make them more and more aware of what a culturally responsive ed and responsive education is and um and i think that that will help largely in the process setting
146things up like that getting uh you know evolving understandings as a group and being a part of that constant evolution really does help us stay together and make that big difference great thank you okay let's go to porn thank you and thank you dr willett for the presentation i i did see it a couple years ago but i feel like i had a much greater appreciation for it this time around after reading some of the books you told me to read um one thing i wanted to say you had told me to read the book reign of error when i first was on the board in 2017 and i think something i took away from that book might help some people in the public or maybe even some members in the board understand where i'm
147coming from when i look at the budget and i i try to you know find efficiencies and and really what it comes down to is when i look at the system a system tied to property taxes an educational system type to property taxes will always divide rich from poor and unfortunately in connecticut that means black from white um you know and that was all part of my letter to the governor that i got a lot of pushback on so if that and i could talk for hours about this so maybe a workshop would be a a great opportunity for the board to have a conversation or even in some of our committee's you know curriculum understanding like the curriculum from skills for adolescents or whatever we can talk about and have more time there um
148but just wanted to give that perspective that that's kind of where i'm coming from you know i i don't want to push people out and i don't want to keep people out um if i wanted to simplify that and you know that's kind of what i feel in my heart is the best way to stop systemic racism yeah and diane ravitch has a a lot of work a helicopter view a lot of times of schools in general so reign of error is a good book to understand say even the magnet charter movement um and then you know we can drill down if the the board of ed wants to do some book groups i think that would be really awesome there are a number of different books we could read together and then talk about
149them which i think would help again kind of move that conversation along thank you that's true okay let's go to uh griffin thank you dr willett for putting together this presentation i was really just a great way to start the conversation so i really appreciate that um i was curious if the um graduate group that you've been working with um i know you said that most of them graduated i think it was 14 15 and 16 and you know kind of you started all your efforts if you will on all this in 16. um so just i was curious did they have any feedback for you on whether they felt that everything you you've done since 2016 was really a step in the right direction and did they kind of give you any um feedback
150is to things that they would like to see put into the schools specifically just i was just wondering kind of what what their thoughts were on it i think um there there have been some individuals involved although i have not been able to get as much access to them because um a lot of the young uh adults or adults that are in college they don't they're uh they're not as accessible sometimes um but um i've received feedback um both positive and uh constructive about um you know where we are now and and what to continue to consider and think about and i i intend to continue to incorporate that in a variety of ways the voices is one you know voices programs are what i'm looking at for future um you know the the nuance
151there is again not to traumatize any kids who've had experiences you know i have to be very careful about that so i want to be able to talk about the truth of their lived experience without necessarily asking them to relive very painful moments or things that have happened so um there have been still uh young adults uh that have graduated that aren't as far out as say that you know 2014 15 16 that have expressed um you know some continued thoughts about uh our curriculum you know um the kinds of uh things that uh that they experienced you know throughout that span of time and you know they're they're informative and helpful uh again i think um you know it's important for me obviously to you know to take deep breaths and listen very carefully
152because you know obviously there's a lot of work here invested but at the same time i can i i can still you know acknowledge that that that lived experience still was not what i hoped it could be so um you know there's always opportunities and so i think that while uh there you know have been people that have expressed that they've noticed some things have changed um there are others who continue to express you know concern and so uh in constructive feedback so i try to listen very carefully to that and put aside whatever personal you know what might rise up as a defense or defensiveness once again you know using that cre practice not make the conversation about myself or my own personal feelings but to listen very carefully to what they're saying and
153really try to find in it you know what what i can do to to take that and make a difference with it so you know i have heard from people more recently than that too and like i said some were feeling like there was a difference and and some were saying that they you know they offered some feedback about how some things persist and how can we can continue to evolve so i think those voices programs will be helpful because we can continue to hear those voices to center you know the voices of the students and their lived experiences and then be able to talk about them not get defensive about them per se but you know hear them and then you know look at where we can make that difference that type of thing
154thank you let's go to jacob okay um so a few things uh first i i agree a lot with what christina said i think that's an important way to look at these issues and something that i definitely take into consideration um when we talk about the budget as well another thing that just kind of parallels this conversation that i did want to bring up from my personal um educational experience and talent schools is um just kind of the influence of some of the the literature we read up in english class um remember having very long conversations and long units about books like uh watson's go to birmingham or um to kill a mockingbird which covered events during the civil rights movement and um i i like to see that those programs are continued i think
155those are very helpful um very impactful up in my life and understanding those sorts of uh issues um also i was just wondering is this powerpoint and some of the other materials that might be included up in some of those workshops available for viewing up on the dashboard so we could review them further dr willa sure yeah this one i i just finished uh tonight uh got a few minutes before the meeting i was putting the final touches on it so so i'll i'll post this as soon as uh as we're done tonight both to the dashboard and to the um the website if not tonight they go too late tonight tomorrow maybe but yes all right okay thank you sure you know that this was great um i think it was a great initial
156conversation like you said it's always evolving and there's just a lot to it um i do think that if you can get that out on the dashboard uh that would be great but i'm not sure maybe if the public might want to have access to because you did have a lot of information so i think that would be helpful um just in case you know i know you have a 101 different websites and everything else going but you know if you could post that that would be great as well okay um so at this time let's move to the h4 um no h3 the yep birch grove for the code violation from suitable soils right so um you know i apologize that uh things are fast and furious you know with the birchwood project um
157we did get the opportunity to um have the unsuitable soils covered um but in order to have them covered which looks like they would be almost 100 percent covered by the state the cost of them would be you know extensive and so you know having that resolved is extremely uh beneficial for the students and the community but in order to do that um the process requires that um we have a you know another committee and it's not a big one it's a small one um peter stop is on there mike rosen's on there it's like a sub-sub-committee of that process but um the purpose of it is to uh to you know go through and uh just you know go basically evaluate and do the head specs and the unsuitable soils uh for the code
158violation um that it's being considered to be so in order for that to move forward we had to do what's called an sgc 1030 ed specs form for the project which is the you know resolving the unsuitable soils project and the board of ed needs to move that forward for us to be able to move it forward and to get that reimbursement for the the town of tollinger to get it actually paid for i'm sorry um you know for the town of tallinn so this introduces the the basic structure that we need to remove that forward and the motion here would be to approve the educational specifications document for the birch cove primary school foundation project under the renovator's new status and to accept and authorize the project to be executed this would be to
159um to authorize you know the the project for unsuitable soils and to execute that project so what i want to kind of segue to here is the head specifications the virtual primary school violation um of the unsuitable soils you know is you know is um kind of articulated in project form in this document that uh we created you know obviously uh peter staub is on the committee here that will be reviewing this it's a short-term committee it talks about the project itself the project rationale why we're going to be replacing the soils and it does cover a lot of the things that you've already seen with respect to background what the long-range plans are this section here is specifically about the code violation so it describes what happens it describes why it's uh you know
160why and what we're doing to remediate that and it's expected the most important piece here for us is you know it's expected that the state of connecticut will be in reimbursing the cost at a hundred percent so in order to move that forward um we have to have the board of ed move forward on um you know on this so um this just will continue you know if you if you i'll post it and i apologize uh that everything i said like i said is fast and furious here but we do need um you know we do need to move forward with it tonight in order to uh to get the process you know all the way to completion um and to get that reimbursement of 1.9 million dollars so um so we would want
161to move h3 to action um and we would want to approve the educational specifications for the birch girl primary school foundation project under the renovated status and authorized this project to be executed we'd probably also want to add um you know add the unsuitable soils piece to this i think this motion would work but i think we would also want to say motion to approve the educational specifications document um for the birch grove primary school foundation project under the renovated new status as well as the unsuitable soils project and authorize this project to be executed but you'd need to move it to action obviously to do that this is kate howard bender i move to approve the educational specifications document for the birch grove primary school foundation project under renovate as new status in addition
162to the unsuitable soils seconds h3 too yeah any uh discussion um i see hands are up uh poor do you have your hand up and tony it was just to move it to action okay h3 to k4 say you have k4 tony so i'm just trying to understand it it seems to be a trend with this project that we have this is another thing that we have to review and approve immediately or the state withdraws its funding well i think it again it's in response to the emergency project of the um you know the foundation you know being seen as a emergency status project and that you know them completing that project in a two-year time span provides less of an impact for the community of talon in this particular case what they're trying to
163do is give the town of thailand you know 1.9 million dollars to cover the cost of the code violation of the unsuitable soil so you know rather than incurring that as a community they're they're trying to avoid us uh their talent from having to incur that as a community so it is it is definitely a short-term thing that requires a short-term turnaround but it's towards the effort of getting that 1.9 million dollars covered at 100 percent okay uh karen um just to help with tony's question dr willa isn't this related to that special mini committee that they had to form because of the unsuitable soils and a lot of paperwork that had to be done because of it and it's something that was required by the state for to deal with the unsuitable soils basically
164yes we need to do it as a different project and so there's a small committee of three pete stabba i think it was pizza with mike rosen i think it might be scott lapp and you know it's a small committee meant to execute this as a separate project to address the code violation yes okay and with that said um let's go to uh a vote to move this to what we say um k four uh count it was already moved we have to vote oh sorry i kate hi dana hi uh griffin hi tony hi jacob hi rainy hi well therefore this motion will move to k4 so let's go to um h5 the zoom participation discussion we had added on actually we're not doing h4 you have an h4 oh i'm sorry h4 2021
165board of education meeting dates well first read right so if i can just kind of give a quick intro as you recall from the last meeting um there was a poli a recommended policy change to move back to uh or to move it to seven o'clock meetings um so you know in keeping with the timeline for typically talking about our budget dates um this is being put forward to you as a superintendent item as a first read of the dates but your decision to you know to change the date the time from 7 30 to 7 should you decide to do that in action tonight would then affect this document so you could either stick this document after that for action or you can change the time back to seven o'clock and wait two weeks
166to approve the actual dates knowing that the time has been changed um so this is just to get the dates in front of you which is typically the time of year that we would do that um and we would adjust the uh any documentation with respect to these dates by um by putting the new time in if you decide to change the time tonight so this is the first read of the actual dates for you okay if that makes sense hopefully because these are all like essentially the um the second and the fourth wednesdays and this is just the normal protocol of having the dates in here and and um the discussion of the time is still uh later and right mostly that is what uh that is mostly what those are there may be
167a one or two that may be off that because of some conflict but this is generally the the second and fourth okay so are we putting this motion then if we move this to tag along with the k1 is this what you're saying at your discretion you could act you could move this to action alongside or right after you change the time if you do that or you can make the second read on the dates next meeting and change the time or don't change the time tonight in action but right now in action the second read of that policy is whether you're changing the time from 7 30 to 7. because we just need to have the dates by the first meeting in november correct correct okay so we can wait on that then we
168can just have the dates on here and then we can have that discussion later and then do everything together okay so everyone has the dates now okay is there any discussion on the dates don't let your computer die [Music] okay nervous let's go to the um h5 now with the zoom discussion participation so if you would like to yeah it's i'd just like to to discuss the possibility is it possible for us to continue to offer zoom as a way for our residents not as a replacement but as a way as an additional way for residents to stay involved in our meetings i think that we've seen an in a marked increase in engagement and i think that that is a good thing for our kids and good for our board um to have more
169folks voices at the table so that's really just what this is all about just getting this idea on the table since um let's go to board members tony uh and just you know i want to point out i i agree with what kate's saying uh you know obviously these past couple of months rather selfishly zoom has allowed me to participate in meetings i normally couldn't have uh but i wanted to add to that you know we've got policy 9160 which talks about uh getting conduct and it's got a section in there for telephonic participation uh which obviously needs to be updated but could be brought to the modern age and instead of saying telephonics say remote and allow for that possibility of zoom meetings but we could fit it in there sorry okay so then
170it could be a policy conversation for the subcommittee but let's say we since we have it on the floor let's get some board members um discussion and then you know i believe that that would end up going back to your committee tony um karen yes just a case in point tonight we've had between 30 and 35 um participants even just on tonight's meeting and if we were in council chambers that would not be happening over the years it's always been an issue to engage parents in their board of education their children's education and what's going on at this level um because of child care or you know both parents need to be home or one is working or things like that and in the past we've tried to offer child care and things like that
171which is also kind of a struggle to organize um but you know i think out of this pandemic if we look at it as you know a positive thing that people have been able to engage in these meetings then that's you know a good thing it's a positive thing and um sometimes technology can help us so we should be embracing it 21st century skills for us and adults so i'm all for it if we can make it happen okay any other board members at this time because at this point i am going to just ask tony to take that upon himself in the policy to rewrite and he loves policies and i'm not sure if he's on right now but i'm sure he'll be excited about that so i'm guessing that you're asking him to
172put it on his policy tracker is that what you're yes definitely okay thank you you know i think that would be uh helpful okay did we move to extend our meeting past ten o'clock uh yes i will entertain a motion to extend our meeting past ten o'clock hate howard bender so moved sorry second okay let's uh vote karen hi kate aye lord hi dina i griffin i tony hi jacob hi and rini i i as well therefore um meeting will go past 10. okay so let's move to on tony um did you get the memo that we're going to move that participation at the 9160 that you can review it in your policies committee okay perfect um canadian liaison report um let's see do we have ffc yes okay go ahead okay thank you um
173so [Music] we went through the um september numbers budget to actual with greater detail thank you dr willett for providing appendix f-1 as it is now being called that was perfect exactly what we were looking for um we talked about the kobit related grants and we're still waiting hopefully for the covered relief fund grant and the cares act grant and we've had about 150 000 to date expense for covid related items we talked about the capital budget request and we talked about having um ffc do facilities tours uh that was um ms philbin's suggestion which we all thought was really great to kind of go through our five buildings and kind of to see so we're gonna set those up in the future and then um perhaps before next year's capital request um since it
174was a little bit of a time crunch this year we're going to maybe talk to gustava and his crew a couple times throughout the year to just to get a really good understanding of what is going to be expected um when that comes around again so that was about it thank you very much i just have to say if dana's going on these tours just keep in mind she has these license to use these machinery we already told her we might need her to drive the lift things out okay uh thank you very much let's see uh negotiations i think they had something ringing i i actually had a quick question for finance and facilities oh go ahead i'm just wondering if the whole board you know once covid's over should be doing um facility
175tours because in the past um what used to happen um and dr willett i think you know with the new board and things um that in the past uh when the new board is in place um there were tours that would happen through each of the schools if we could if we were available to do it not everyone was always available to do it but it was a quick tour with the principal at each school and they just walked us around to familiarize us with their school that's something that happened in the past so just a suggestion i think that's a good suggestion i know it's hard to get into places with kovid so i think that would have to be something yeah no i'm not talking about now this is something that used to
176happen yeah no but i do like the idea of having that happen if once we can whenever that date might become available um okay negotiations rini um you know we're we're working with the peri union and um you know having discussions and we've got some dates set up so we're working through that and other than that there's not really a lot that can be reported perfect um birch grove obviously the unsuitable soil kind of was the big thing um yes um we met and we talked about the unsuitable soils which obviously dr willett brought um to the table today um and miss bellady explained why the town needs to set up a special building committee so this is something um and it's separate from the committee that the actual bridge grove committee what dr willett
177has said and this is just um more profiling the proper procedure and ensuring and that's why mr saba is on it um as a building committee member uh he can speak intelligently at what's going on and um and what have you but as as dr willett said there are three members on that to ensure that that lead that legislation works and it actually gets approved for that hundred percent um funding um but with that it kind of turns over to the effect of some some things we kind of put to the wayside uh when it comes to some fine touches and different um aesthetics in the building there were some things that the committee had to put to the side to vote on to add to the project or to take off but because of
178on the unknown of the unsuitable soils we had to kind of put them to the side so we're bringing those back to the table to see what we can't put into the the building itself and the uh the building committee did have some folks were able to tour the facility which was fantastic um they ca d'amato and the entire team on the birch grove the construction team sorry did a phenomenal job they set up two different um sight walks one at 3 30 one at 5 30 before our meeting that evening there are several folks myself included who had work restrictions who weren't able to attend they've offered for another one on this saturday they've bent over backwards to be accommodating so that folks can actually to see what's going on and see the progress
179and see how far um we really are moving with this building it is enclosed and it's tight they're moving they're moving very quickly and efficiently and effectively it looks phenomenal if any of you have driven by so i wanted to say thank you to the entire team working on that site who have done whatever they can to keep this project on task and to open up their doors literally and figuratively to allow building committee members to come onto the site and the mock room is almost done so that will be able to be an i don't know if dr willa can say a little bit more about it in better detail but pretty much it's it's going to be a finished room so we'd have an idea of what an ideal classroom will look like
180in birch grove um and that's kind of where we are with the building committee right now thank you thank you dana um i'm i can't wait to see what this mock room is going to be because i keep hearing about it so it'll be great to actually have that up and going and someone's going to have to have their phone and figure out the panorama i will you're on it i will not be your videographer i would defer that to dr willa if you have a vr headset you'll be able to stand in the whole space so okay now you're taking it to a whole new level i mean you're used to the doodle polls so [Laughter] maybe we'll bring a gopro in there or something perfect um i believe those are all the committees
181that have um within the time frame if i'm missing anyone please let me know if not i will continue on okay i do not have a chairperson's report so we will go to uh board action and we will have k1 the 9130 discussion so just as uh just queue it up again moving the board meetings from 7 730 to needs to be done as a board action revision to board policy 31 sorry 9130 um and therefore it's offered to the board of education through the attached the emotion would be motion to change the start time of the board education meetings from 7 30 to 7 and to amend 9130 accordingly and that amendment 9130 would basically be basically be that the meetings are seven christina plourde motion to change the start time at the board
182of education meetings from 7 30 to 7 p.m and amend policy 9130 accordingly now the discussion um clearly you have your hand up oh i didn't mean to sorry okay at this time for board members if you could raise your hand to discuss no one okay then we will do a vote sorry ashley i'm slow to the punch my apologies um i just wanted to say i know that 7 30 was there um simply because of some of the working members on the committee um had said in the past of being able when we're in board chambers actually back in i hate to say the real world or the world we knew it as before it would be challenging i'm not going to lie that it's going to be a challenge but i will say
183like tony said earlier because of covet zoom has happened which has afforded several of us the opportunity who wouldn't necessarily be able to be on a meeting at a specific time or a place um there so in a zoom world seven o'clock you know would be fine in in back in the normal world and we're important chambers just 7 30 7 30 is tight for me and again i don't want to change the world for one person or not um i just wanted to make sure i communicated that to you and then you know we also have um you know a lot of the a lot of feedback that i got from several parents and the community and families and community it was easier for them to attend if they were going to attend and
184board chambers because they were able to get their kids dinner and get them settled and then come on down but just just some food for thought um again right now it's everything is so different being on zoom so that's it thank you thank you dana um any other board members at this time would like to speak i'm gonna give everyone a minute because just in case okay um let's vote uh karen um i'll say nay i i think 7 30 is more doable for people trying to get um families settled so they could get on the meeting okay okay i'm sorry did you say dana yep okay nay hi tony hi jacob hi remy hi and i'm an eye as well um therefore motion passes to change the board of meetings from 730 to 7.
185okay let's go to k2 the cleaning screen cleaning dana plourde proposed motion to approve the edge wrong one i'm sorry proposed motion to amend board policy to include what was projecting on the screen there and after item five add okay i think we need to verbally say it though okay um motion motion to amend board policy 1041 to include pursuant to subsection a2a of section 10-231-g of the connecticut general statutes any disinfectant disinfecting cleaner sanitizer or any other my anti-microbial microbial product approved by federal law may be used by the talon board of education after item five and to add guidance regarding green cleaning requirements and coronavirus slash covid19 department of administrative services parentheses march 5th to 2020 available at the modeling website lisa will have to make sure you get that pdf number nickamar
186the listing sorry go ahead jacob okay jacob mari's second okay any uh board members at this time would like to speak this uh dana i think my hand's still up from before okay any members would like to speak to the green cleaning if not we will go to the vote okay uh karen hi kate hi lord i as well therefore this motion passes unanimously okay let's do our board of educational goals christina clare's proposed motion motion to approve the board of education goals for 2020-2021 rainy be saw a second okay uh discussion um karen um yes i think i saw in the packet um dr willett could you scroll up to the can we spell out portrait of a graduate and number one because i don't think anyone reading it is really not going to
187know what that is sure i can uh when we publish them i will spell out the pog portfolio and and then i was also going to request that it also gets put on our agendas going forward like our other set of goals were i think that's going to depend on how much space that uh the zoom meeting takes up because i don't want to go to two pages we can short yeah but i mean three pages like this is an actual physical background actually i think that it's appropriate to have them on our agendas so people know what our goals are all the time do you think that you can format it so that we're not going to three pages for an agenda yeah i i think probably what i can do is cut out
188all that zoom phone number stuff and just have one local area you know as as local as possible phone number so we could probably do that um and i'll just cut out all the other zoom info and just have the link and the code and the local area number yeah i don't think we need germantown in chicago and new york and xyz okay perfect um do i need to do an amendment for the spelling out of the pog for the um portrait of a graduate or can we just do that i think yeah yeah you're okay you're just you're accepting the goals i'll i'll make sure that portrait or graduate is spelled out okay any other discussion at this time okay um let's go to the vote karen hi hey kate hi laura hi dana
189hi griffin hi tony hi jacob hi rini hi i as well therefore it passes unanimously and let's go back to uh k4 for the educational specifications document uh let's do that christine deplored motion to approve the educational specifications document for the birch grove primary school foundation project under renovate as new status as well as unsuitable soils and to accept and authorize this project to be executed that does the same thing but basically just explicitly talks to that unsuitable soils and you know that then covering the language mirroring the language that i see in the town council thing so i wondered if maybe you'd want to consider putting this motion oh sorry i was reading off of this waltz yeah no no so i'll go back and say motion i'll take my motion back or send
190it motion do you have to because now that we have it on the floor you'd have to withdraw it and then redo it so um you asked to withdraw your motion can i withdraw my motion and then we'd have to have a discussion if anyone has a discussion if not then we have to vote and you have to have two thirds so karen hi kate hi lord aye dana hi griffin hi tony hi jacob hi rainey hi i as well therefore your emotion is now withdrawn so now you can make a new one christina ford motion to approve the ed spec document for the birch grove primary project code violation and unsuitable soils project authorizing all necessary applications and waivers jacob murray second okay any discussion on this if not we will vote okay karen
191jacob aye rainey hi i as well therefore this passage unanimously okay um let's move to public participation at this time the comments must be limited to items on the agenda and when you speak if you could please leave um say your first name last name and your address and tony will give you a 30 seconds cue when you have that left let's go to kate bellow hi guys i just wanted to make a quick comment to thank dr willett for his presentation on cre i've had the pleasure of participating in some rich discussions around these topics with administrators and teachers appreciation for the work that they're doing it's heartening to hear that this work is ongoing and especially great to hear that the connections are being made with social emotional learning and emotional intelligence in
192the district as these are you know of course inextricably intertwined i'm in strong support of continued exploration of these topics at the board level and it is encouraging to hear that you guys are exploring these possibilities so thank you for that um this district is just incredibly fortunate to have a superintendent that not only supports growth in the schools um but does in the boardroom as well so thank you dr willett and everyone thank you um let's go to colleen hey ashley um colleen you to check 12 blueberry hill road just a couple things i first want to start off by thanking the teachers and staff um they've been very responsive to any questions and i think mr poland paul and poland i'm sorry if i say his last name wrong um has been a
193great epi in the new principal he's also very responsive to when i email him and i'm sure he is with other parents as well i also wanted to um say the wednesdays are a great day for kids or students to follow up just like the student reps have said earlier another thing is goals is also a good idea to have on the agenda i just know the past boards we always had it on there so we started our meeting we can review our goals to ourselves and remind ourselves why we put those goals on there the first place and finally the last questions for dr willett um i was just wondering like seasons of changing from fall to winter i know a lot of kids get um asthma so they may have a dry cough
194so if they go to a nurse's office how does the nurse distinguish um if it's just that or if they really think it's covered i was just wondering um if we might overreact if somebody actually coughs or sneezes or whatever it is how the district is handling that and that's it okay thank you colleen um let's go to brenda sorry my mouse took off uh brent felici for laurel ridge road i want to make sure that my comments are being made as a parent and not as a member of the town council um i just wanted to give a little perspective when we were talking about wednesdays we didn't talk about what kind of break that allows for this remote learning students i have a child who is 100 remote learning because she has an
195auto immune disorder um to have that one day where she is not sitting for the entire day in her bedroom on her computer is a great break it it allows her some flexibility it also allows her some accountability in some self-growth so that she's accountable for her own learning at that time she's accountable for reaching out to the teachers that wednesday allows her to get out of the day what she puts in she at the beginning of the year was putting in minimal effort to finish her assignment and get it done and i challenged her to try to find out how she can expand on what was given to her by her instructors so that she can take um what was offered and explore her own learning path and engage in her with her instructors
196for more enriching experience and it has been a huge success for her she's growing she is learning how to advocate for herself she's learning how to expand what is given to her by the by her instructors and i have to say that um is dr will is her name ashley the i have it written down um the person who you have as a liaison for the remote learning parents she's been phenomenal i'm sorry i didn't open up her email to verify her name but she's been a phenomenal help and resource to us so wednesday's excellent for remote learners it gives them a break in their routine in their schedule and it also gives them an opportunity to ex grow as individual and independent learners so thank you thank you brenda um at this time any
197other members of the public would like to make a comment please raise your blue hand if not we will move on okay let's go to uh points of information um dr willa i don't know if you um want to respond to anything or um i think um had the question of how we handle if a student has asthma something like that so um students that have um either you know either existing conditions um or what we call an alternative diagnosis you know if a child's coughing and it's part of asthma uh typically a doctor will uh you know will have provided you know an alternative diagnosis or there will be a a condition that the child has that would uh that would create that situation and so those that have those kinds of pre-existing conditions
198you know we know about it and a lot of times that that won't result in a child being out however if a child adds symptoms you know if there are added symptoms to that and those include you know fever coughing you know the the indicators that could be what is called covid like symptoms um if that is added to what they're typically experiencing um you know for an example fatigue is another one you know if a child stayed up all night watching saturday night live and then the next night stayed up all night you know stayed up most of the night and they're tired they're well they're tired because of that experience and the nurse will ask them you know did you get to bed at a normal time did you experience trouble sleeping did
199you have you know and they'll determine whether those are due to something that occurred or is pre-existing or something like that or um are they new are they you know are they covered like and are they new um and if they are covet-like and new we have a protocol that we have to follow from the health districts where you know that would result in a child being say put out you know for a 10-day quarantine or isolation so they will look at all of the you know conditions around it and they will make a determination based on that okay thank you uh let's go to karen thanks ashley um i just have to pull out some questions notes i had um after nearly seven years serving on the talon board of education i have made
200the difficult decision to resign effective immediately and upon receipt of my resignation letter by the town clerk advocating for the growth and well-being of children of all abilities in our community to help prepare them for the future has been my mission throughout my years serving as a volunteer for tallinn public schools i have been privileged to be a steward of this community and our school system an honor to support our administrators and educators in our journey to serve tallinn's youngest generation modeling responsibility accountability and passion has been core to my mission thinking back to my early days in our school system as an active pto member and president while raising a young family it was all about the kids not just my kids but everyone else's kids in our schools how could we support our
201students educators and administrators to drive towards positive experiences and achievements that's what inspired my initial passion and still does and ironically now as a parent of a child who has successfully gone through our school system and graduated i feel even more qualified as a contributing member to the success of our students today than ever before this journey has granted me years of experience and access to data diverse perspectives and deep discussions over the years i valued the historical and institutional knowledge of veteran board members before me and learned from them whether democrat republican or independent we had deep discussions together with our superintendent and worked hard to build consensus among us i am proud of that work and honored to have made a difference alongside them if nothing else i know that i served through
202principles over politics through respect for our experts and not personal agendas i would like to thank our superintendent dr walter willett for his tireless leadership humility and poise no matter the challenge i would like to thank our administrators teachers paraprofessionals secretaries counselors nurses custodians cafeteria staff and especially our students for they are the ones who are my ultimate motivation to carry on and to our student reps past and present i thank you for your dedication on the board as the voices for all of our students please continue to use your voices for it is our youth that will lead us into the future i wish you all good luck wherever your path takes you i look forward to continuing to support our community and school system in other positive ways thank you tolland for your
203faith in my service i hope you are listening to the words between the lines tonight lastly i will just say that this decision did not come lightly it goes against every fiber of my being not to fulfill my commitment to our community to our superintendent and to our students so i say to the talon community i hope you are really listening to my message this evening the narrative being built behind the scenes and on social media before the board can work together as a collective group is an insult to this work and an insult to our students and staff who are relying on us to make thoughtful decisions for our district when our young adults are disappointed with the behavior of adults again i say i hope talland is listening thank you all well thank
204you very much for your service karen seven years is definitely uh nothing to laugh at that's you know a very long time to give to your community and i do thank you for all of that um i'm not sure what happens next in terms of what goes but there's a there's a process i figured as much continue on but it was a really tough decision for me and um i'm sure it wasn't sure was not an easy decision i'm sure you know you definitely provide a lot of information and you know it's as you know for seven years of providing your time it's a lot and it's not going to be well but i do thank you for everything i appreciate that i've uh have a lot of passion for the talon community over the
205years 2022 23 years now i've lived in thailand and it's a great place to live i hope we can move forward i would um pass my pass on to kate howard bender or if you want to take the others first i think kate had her hand up but i just took it down that's right anyway thank you and um i'm sorry it was a long meeting and we're doing this now but well thank you um okay um it feels weird to say this now karen i'm sorry to see you go um i know we haven't always gotten along we battle at the table sometimes but anyways uh just to address the health concern that colleen brought up um when i was in the covid meeting they had said um some of the administrators had said
206that there's a lot of kids staying home that don't need to stay home and i just wanted to point anyone listening that there is a virtual health room that i believe dr will it set up or somebody's set up that you can assess your child at home with um and then keep in touch with the nurse and that's been working because when kids go remote and the teacher doesn't expect that them to go remote it it creates more work uh for the staff um going back and forth and if like dr willett said if the child can be in school it's better for them okay um dana thank you ashley um thank you karen for your thoughtful words and for all the service that you have provided um the um talent public schools and the
207entire community and the students of tallinn you will be greatly missed on the board of education you've served as a great mentor for myself as well as many others who are i'm sure are would be approaching this endeavor in the future so thank you um i did want to address miss falusi's um conversation about the wednesdays and my apologies for missing the kobit conversation um but just one thing that i wanted to kind of check on to what miss flucy said was what i've found on the remote days and the feedback that i've heard is a lot of the teachers at least in the younger grades are reaching directly out to the remote students who don't necessarily have that one-on-one time in the classroom or that close teacher interaction in the classroom so they've taken
208upon themselves to have it whether it be an individual zoom for 30 minutes or they have a more relaxed zoom or meets or whatever where they can meet with students that are struggling on a specific topic or things like that so um that definitely is quite helpful on the wednesdays for like you said the the students to regroup and kind of format their own day and really reach out to their respective educator um to ensure that happens to continue their education on their path so thank you ms feluci for your additional comments and again thank you karen for your for your service thank you thank you ashley um let's go to jacob i just wanted to thank karen for all of her time up on the board you know only having been on here for
209less than a year it's definitely a challenge sometimes it feels like an unpaid job at times and to uh for seven years that's that's real dedication to the community and i wish you well in your future endeavors let's go to rainey um i just want to echo kind of what jacob said and others karen i i wish you the best it's it's unfortunate we're kind of just getting started with the negotiations and i know your historical knowledge is very helpful and um you know we'll miss you um despite the fact that we don't always all see eye to eye on everything i i think you lend a good voice and um i wish you the best thank you uh tony yeah i just wanted to chime in and thank karen as well for her her
210service i mean the the time that i've gotten on this term and then reading minutes and previous uh previous minutes from earlier years uh show that your passion is obvious for the students is an amazing thing and i appreciate it and sincerely hope that you'll continue to be a resource for those of us that are still here so thank you i'm sorry to say guys i will not be going away good stay i still have a child in high school i'm uh griffin i just wanted to echo everybody's elsito thanking you karen i know this past year for me has been just overwhelming there's just a lot so thank you for the seven years you have put in because if like we've we haven't always agreed but i know firsthand that you are very passionate
211and you care a lot about these schools in this community so i have full faith that you will still be a good resource and no you will not be going anywhere and i look forward to still having some conversations with you and uh i wish you the best in you know wherever your public service life takes you okay karen you've been a mentor you are amazing um you already know that uh dear talent community thank you for trusting me to serve you as a member of your board of education at this time i regret to inform you that i will be resigning from my position as a board of education member effective tomorrow i will be sending this letter to ms palumbo tonight and it is my expectation that after reading it in full my
212entire letter will be a place in the board's minutes i sincerely hope that i have served you well these past two years and i come to you with a heavy heart i had hoped that my 23 years as a public educator during which i assumed the responsibility of ensuring that my students had what they needed to be successful both academically and personally would help me to be of service to the children of talent the republican super majority's goal of supporting 21st century skills would have required proactive planning with regard to intervention curriculum staffing and perhaps most importantly access to technology the board of education majority has expected education funding to come from anywhere else except for the board of education budget the students of the town of thailand are dependent upon the generosity of outside
213agencies or the respective wealth of their own family under chairperson lundgren's and vice chair plurals leadership the board has not asked the educational experts the most essential question what do the children of talon need in order to be successful there is no big picture understanding of the needs and priorities of town public schools upon which the board should base all of its decisions including the creation of the budget instead the rhetoric has been where else can we cut through budget season dr willett facilitated the yearly workshops and the board engaged in multiple budget discussions not one member of the republican super majority missed any of these budget sessions during which the board members deliberated over my new details to no significant financial advantage dr willett found savings when he negotiated with insurance agents a board
214of education should advocate for the needs of the children with the town council instead your chair and vice chair have allowed the town council to dictate the next moves at the last joint session before the pandemic hit instead of advocating for the approved board of education budget chairperson lundgren and vice chair floored simply deferred to the town council to further pick apart the board of education's budget neither chaired or vice chair attended the town council meeting last night on october 27 to advocate for the school system's capital projects chairperson lundgren is not fulfilling the responsibility of representing the full 15 000 town residents this board of education has been used as a tool to avoid costs at all costs at the expense of students needs academic social emotional athletic inclusion educational tools material and at
215all i blame the chair and the vice chair for the fact that our district was unprepared to transition to distance learning with only enough individual devices to serve 43 percent of our students this was due to their short-sighted mismanagement and micromanagement it is not reasonable for the board to expect that parents spend hundreds of dollars to supply their children with the tools to accept access their education especially especially during a pandemic dr willett suggested a one-on-one one-to-one device initiative early in the budget year but it was not prioritized by the republican leadership dr willett warned the warned of the board of education about potential device supply chain issues upon which the leadership took no action when the pandemic hit republican leadership waited for someone else to solve the device problem instead of collaborating collaboratively seeking
216out solutions the device deficit was addressed by state grants that dr willett wrote and a sizable donation from tepto the narrative of fiscal minimalism promoted by the chair and vice chair combined with the back to basics orientation have directly and negatively impacted our students this board of education majority is solely motivated to reduce the mill rate versus ensuring quality schools as articulated by their duties in connecticut state statute 10 to 20. in november 2019 once the republican super majority voted themselves into the chair and vice chair positions chairperson lundgren offered some words at our initial meeting saying that discussions are needed as some of the best ideas come from different people collaborating these discussions need to take place civilly so all voices are heard i agree with her democracy only works when all voices are
217heard however the republican majority began our term with a partisan agenda and pre-prescribed outcomes undercutting democracy there has been no real discussion or hearing all voices evidence quickly began accumulating that the board's super majority is not interested in hearing anyone's voices other than their own the sole leadership position offered to democrats was offered to a brand new member of the board though the members skills are multitudinous offering a leadership seat to the least veteran democratic member demonstrated the new republican leadership's unwillingness to include the voice and expertise of a returning member who previously served as vice chair when the curriculum committee was added to the board of education as a professional educator with decades of experience evaluating and implementing curriculum i hope to lead the committee it was clear to me however that the republican
218leadership had different plans for their committee it was only after i sent my resume and my professional and educational background and requested a meeting with chairperson lundgren that the chairperson relented and appointed me the chair of the curriculum committee i still wonder which other member ms lundgren might have appointed to this chairpersonship whether it be the uconn student the accountant or the pharmaceutical sales representative these occupations do not prepare a person to oversee and make curricular decisions or recommendations for a school district the fact that the board majority assumes that they can make these decisions without the education and training that the superintendent and his staff possess is a sign of the pervasive disrespect for educators that seems to run through the republican the majority those who do not agree with the republican super majority
219are ignored or repudiated in january and february of 2020 the board received communication from 195 residents in support of dr willett's proposed budget compare combined with the majority of public participate participants supporting the budget as opposed to seven residents who requested a lower budget your voices as constituents were ignored and the super majority plotted on scrutinizing second guessing and opposing each detail of dr willett's proposed budget leading to another reduction in staff and services disagreement is often labeled pushback and is quieted quickly quieted by a cacophony of seemingly synchronous republican voices this recurring tactic of discrediting or discounting voices contradicts chairperson london's original plea to engage the community hoping that we get correspondence from a variety of people one can only conclude that she wants correspondence from people who share her views while the budget
220sessions had perfect republican attendance four of the nine board members attended tps voices from our schools discussion with a solitary republican board member in attendance this occurred in the wake of national equity demonstrations and after the the board received a diversity equity and inclusion petition signed by 358 residents in july students parents residents and members of this board have repeatedly requested action but there are still no republican leadership-driven inclusion or diversity agenda items dr willett has continued this life-saving work engaging former and and current students in discussions and community-based initiatives promoting equity and inclusion the republican leadership recently asked him and tonight to present this information further abdicating their responsibility for taking action on inclusion and equity the democratic minority was promised good communication but we are informed of the agenda items only after it
221has been officially published the republican leadership team has not given miss moran miss philbin or me the opportunity to contribute to the board's agenda the democratic minority has been subject to a calculated structural and procedural marginalization furthermore this marginalization has led to the systematic disenfranchisement of community members our multiple attempts to lend our voices to the discussion have gone unanswered or ignored by the chair and vice chair my involvement in the board of education meetings has become futile building consensus among divergent perspectives is another hallmark of democracy i learned that the board of education should act with one voice the board should have determined goals earlier in our term at the beginning of our term so that we could work together toward a common cause and to nurture that one voice i'm glad to see
222these goals have finally been approved and i strongly urge the board of education to use them as guideposts going forward seemingly unaware of their roles and responsibilities the republican super majority does not demonstrate any appreciation for the vast expertise and historical knowledge of dr willett a board of education has one direct report employee the superintendent and the chair and vice chair should engage him in constructive student-centered interactions yielding ever better results for the students of thailand the chair and vice chair is supposed to support the superintendent in his role of running the district efficiently and effectively not to assign additional unreasonable time-consuming demands or to interrupt his attempts to run our district on the shoestring budget that they demand chairperson longer district suggested to all of us that we should listen to understand not simply
223to reply and i agree asking tough questions is absolutely part of the role of elected officials the super majority often claims that they are asking the tough questions about the town's resources however when they receive the answer to these questions replete with the supporting evidence they have a responsibility to familiarize themselves with the answers and evidence instead of listening and learning the republican majority of this board has peppered dr willett with repetitive and or uninformed questions chairperson lundgren requested that we be kind and patient with one another i would point to the year-long litany of exam of examples of lack of civility and kindness perpetrated by members of the republican caucus to me to miss moran intermittently to miss philbin and to superintendent willett i point to the personal attack that i endured on social
224media by vice chairplord which i attempted to mediate with miss plourde to be essentially dismissed or the email harassment by ms griffin's husband i brought both of my concerns to chairperson lundgren to no avail despite having a super majority on the board of education vice chair plourde regularly espouses a victim narrative that she is giving the voice to the unheard which is especially absurd and insulting to those of us who have been paying attention in the past year vice chair plord regularly hearkened back to the previous boards stating that she was an outlier and was unheard or dismissed surprisingly she has not used that experience of feeling unheard to ensure that the minority voices are heard during this term the policy committee attempted to address civility issues with a civility clause there were some very
225good ideas in this clause however i saw no point in adopting the final version of the clause because the final version was poorly engineered it contained neither accountability measures nor any social media stipulations the chair and vice chair could have used this clause as an opportunity to build consensus and buy-in from the entire board instead it was another yet another power play and it was approved without consensus in a vote of four to three following an extended discussion which distracted us again from our primary purpose discussing and ensuring the needs of students the most egregious example of the super majority's personal agendas superseding this constituent's needs was a three separate communication sent to state officials including the governor and the commissioner of education these communications questioned the superintendent's role in making the final decision about
226returning to school during the pandemic it was determined to be legal based on caucus rules i believe this move was sneaky and unethical vice chair plourde stated at our first meeting that a lot of our business will be done in this board room and she is sure that leadership will reach out to the minority representation when needed i can assure you that the democratic minority was not afforded the opportunity to weigh in on this extremely important issue through these actions these six elected officials seemingly circumvented the public requirement of their role and they undermined the superintendent and the authority of the board as a whole in open session in front of you the board of education voted overwhelmingly to approve dr bullet's community supported partial in-person plan the super majority's subsequent electronic communications to state
227officials again disenfranchised the democratic members of the board of education and the residents of talent their letters did not relay the one voice that your board should communicate making their eye votes appear utterly disingenuous i anticipate that this letter will be dissected rehashed and spun by all the various players to fill fit the narratives of the supermajority i hope that the board directs their collective representative energy to advocating for our students needs instead thank you to the teachers administrators and support staff who do more than their fair share to make the schools work for our kids i see you and i support you i would like to thank dr billet for his tireless service to the children staff and families of talent my departure is wholly due to the poor republican leadership of this board
228of education and is no reflection on dr bullet whatsoever my voice is not valued by the republican members of the board of education i cannot fulfill the responsibility for which i was elected given the dysfunction of this board of education i ask that we as the residents of thailand hold our elected officials accountable for the following four things one the town council should cooperate with the democratic town committee to appoint new democratic members to the board of education given how quickly the vacant town council seat was filled precedent for swift action has been set failure to move quickly would be further confirmation that the republican super majorities in town are not interested in the people who are represented by democratic elected officials two the curriculum the curriculum committee should be disbanded until a curriculum director
229or assistant superintendent is hired three as two members as two new members join the board of education this could be an opportunity for the super majority to diversify leadership and committee membership on the board in order to more fully represent talent and to represent that they and to demonstrate that they are willing to work with their democratic colleagues four as budget season again commences all board of education members must stay laser focused on their roles prioritizing the needs of talent students and the newly minted goals as a touchdown once the budget is sent is set then the town council should do their due diligence to fund quality education thank you to the parents and students of the talon public schools for your confidence i am truly humbled by the positive feedback and constructive support that
230i have received i apologize for not finishing my term i ask that we all stay engaged to encourage and support our board members to fulfill their duties and responsibilities to us the citizens of tallant i wish you all continued health and i remind you of lyndon van johnson's words that education is not a problem education is an opportunity the main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth says erasmus our kids are depending on all of us to guide them through to becoming the best possible versions of themselves let us too be the best role models we can be most sincerely kate howard bender former board of education member mother high school administrator teacher community member be well i'm sorry that you feel that way kate and uh thank you for
231all your service that you've done and she's not on okay uh summer um i would just like to thank miss morin and howard bender for everything you have done you're an inspiration to me and hopefully one day i can have a tremendous positive effect you have had on this community both of you had made me feel so welcomed and i don't think thank you is enough for everything you've done thank you thank you summer i appreciate that good luck to you in school i'm sure you're going to do wonderfully thank you for your voice alexandra i just want to kind of repeat that um thank you so much to both of you for your service you've really been an inspiration to me i'm so grateful that you've really truly considered um students when you've been
232making decisions um we're gonna really miss you thanks alexandra good luck to you too with all the college stuff thank you you're gonna be great okay at this time would any other board members have anything to say let's go to dana thank you um and it seems like kate has popped off but i just wanted to mimic the words that i said to karen um hopefully kate's listening in virtual land or what have you but um they've been great mentors um they've been great leaders for this community and i only hope to continue um listening and hearing our constituents and and fighting for all of tom's students and all of tom's constituents and um they have paved a path and integrate they've been great role models for what a board member and a volunteer for
233the community should look like and so again i thank you for your passion your dedication um and your time that you've spent serving the tallinn community so thank you and summer and alexandra beautifully spoken this evening thank you for your kind words thanks dana so at this point um dr willa do you want to go through the future agenda items or at the bottom so uh future agenda items we have you know ongoing equity and cre efforts you know bringing the board into those now and having the board do uh those kinds of activities and reflections um school rounds and tours you know as soon as we can work out the rest of the you know the coveted situations around it we'll we'll continue to do maybe some tours like we had done before uh
234for uh you know for tms you know we did a virtual rounds so maybe we'll add a couple of virtual rounds in there the mental health services initiatives and presentation uh we were going to put that on this agenda but we knew that it was a very heavy agenda so that was going to be moved off until next time or a uh a meeting coming up soon um so i i'd be happy to and will continue to gather the information to provide to the board much like i did tonight for cre um school bus stop safety a portrait of graduate pathways and understanding by design all of these things you know we uh we are in the process of continuing to work and and there'll be a presentation next week or soon after i'm sorry
235not next week one of the upcoming meetings in november uh for the ela uh you know you know presentation by barb daley burns who is our ela supervisor a wonderful professional administrator and educator and she'll be coming to uh you know to enlighten us on uh on english language arts in the district so these are the the most you know most prominent things on our radar for the future perfect at this point i would uh entertain a motion to adjourn jacob mari i move that we adjourned the october 28th regular board of education meeting at 10 55 pm christina any discussion if not um a vote karen do you still get to vote why don't you vote anyways just in case yes loud and proud there you go claude hi ayna hi griffin hi tony
236all right as well therefore our we will adjourn at 55. thank you everybody have a good night